Nodle visual identity
Role: Lead designer, illustrator
Design ask: Maintain distinctive and cohesive brand visuals that align with current and changing marketing messages and product needs as the company and product features grow
Design ask: Maintain distinctive and cohesive brand visuals that align with current and changing marketing messages and product needs as the company and product features grow
After Nodle's complete visual rebrand, I joined the team to maintain and further develop the guidelines as the brand designer. As the initial visual guideline only scraped the surface of each graphical element that placed the brand visually as of summer 2022, we worked on deep diving into how, why, and where each of those elements will look, move, and interact as we use it against new projects and partnerships while the company grows and evolves.
*I will highlight illustrations and flat graphics in this case study.
However, the scope of work spans from out-of-home assets to technical papers and presentations to advertisements and long-form animations.
We wanted to use illustration as a friendly and human touch to our heavily technical Web3 world. That began the process of finding the right style of illustration to use in the range of assets we need and will need to create for various audiences. This illustration process was drawn for a technical paper for developers and builders.
Because our products and overall Web3 terminologies are still very new and often complicated to casual and crypto-curious audiences, we chose to be visually smart and relate heavy information with things we can easily comprehend from our daily knowledge.
Our illustrations are drawn with freehand and loose lines that aren’t exactly straight or proportionally accurate. This helps to make it feel playful and relaxed against our minimal typeface, and geometric elements.
Other than illustration style, we implemented consistency in our other graphic elements such as the circle, use of images, and 3D. We went with a very simplified approach where we limited the options of type size, size of graphical elements, and the use of grids— a small menu of options allowed us to stay very focused on our visual language while forcing us to be creative in other ways within the set rules.
As seen from our evolution below, because the brand shifted drastically from crypto and dark to friendly and approachable, the design language eventually became flat and out of touch with our audience. Therefore shortly after, we readjusted to using lifestyle photos, adhering to new design rules, and leaning into our signature colors and graphical elements. Below shows the progression and finding of brand voice for Nodle. From pre-rebrand on the right, to what it is today on the left:
