This proposal directly supports POKT Network’s 2024 ambitions by addressing the crucial element of brand perception and visibility, aligning with the ambition to become the most trusted infrastructure brand in crypto. By developing a coherent visual language, this initiative will enhance the brand’s appeal and consistency, increasing top-of-mind awareness and transforming brand perception from negative to positive among developers and stakeholders. The expected impact includes improved engagement, streamlined communication, and a visually appealing representation of the brand across all digital platforms, crucial for achieving the broader goals of trust and reliability in the network.
Description of Planned Work:
Previous Work: Stakeholders at the PNF have identified inconsistencies across POKT visual assets on platforms like Twitter, Discord, and the website, which are out of step with the evolving POKT Network brand strategy.
Planned Work:
Phase 1: Audit existing illustrations to establish a baseline and document visual discrepancies.
Phase 2: Develop and formalize a comprehensive visual language system that reflects the quality and trustworthiness of POKT Network.
Phase 3: Test and refine the visual language with high-quality illustrations for the Wonderverse Quest Bot and other key assets.
Ongoing Production: Regular creation of on-brand illustrations for use across digital platforms, ensuring continuous alignment with the evolving brand strategy.
Requested Value of Grant:
This initiative falls under “Immediate Impact” with a requested grant amount of $3,000. This funding is necessary to cover the design, development, and implementation of a visual language system that matches the quality and ambitions of POKT Network as outlined for Q2 2024.
Link to Work Storage:
All project materials, including visual guidelines, drafts, and final illustrations, will be maintained in a dedicated Figma File, ensuring transparency and accessibility for community feedback and contributions (link to be provided upon grant approval).
ETH Wallet Address for Stables Stream:
eth:0x74aE29fCC099d23a229da1024117BAf3380f3f13
Summary
This proposal is crafted to synergize with POKT Network’s strategic goals for enhancing visual consistency, brand recognition, and ultimately helping POKT achieve its ambition of becoming the most trusted infrastructure brand in crypto. Through this visual upgrade, we aim to positively influence developer engagement and stakeholder trust, which are essential for the network’s growth and the successful launch of Shannon.
I’m Travis, but you can call me TW. I’m going to be executing this illustration work. A little about me:
I come from a fine arts background. I have a BFA and MFA in painting and drawing.
I’ve been working as a freelance designer since 2004. I’ve designed graphics, websites, interiors, furniture, clothing… but I mostly work as a UX/UI designer with RaidGuild these days.
I have pretty eclectic taste in visual culture and I love to push the limits of what’s possible and what I can get away with. That being said, I aim to please and it’s my utmost priority to make sure the work I ship is maximally enjoyable and useful. You can help me ensure meaningful results by engaging in this thread, giving feedback, letting me know how you really feel about what I’m showing you, and help steer the visual directions of the future of POKT.
I’ve been in talks with @sasquatch (the “cleric” of our raid party) and @doctorrobinson for some weeks. Seems like we’ve been given the greenlight, so I’m kickstarting this initiative immediately. Here’s how the schedule will work:
I’m going to start sharing a bunch of context, ideas, and inspirations in this channel to get the ball rolling.
Starting next week I will be OOO/AFK for a prescheduled work trip. I will be available to discuss ideas and directions, but not prepared to generate designs.
I will be back at my desk starting June 10 ready to go full throttle thrash mode in my design cave and ship some eye melting beauty by the end of June.
We will reevaluate the impact of this initiative and decide if we want to keep going!
I will be sharing images, iterations, and ideas in bite sized chunks. Please emoji react if you feel strongly about what you encounter! I’m also collecting all this material in project spaces like Figma and eventually Github to hand off the assets.
Thanks for this opportunity and I look forward to meeting more of you! Now LFG!
My first mission is to figure out where these illustrations are going to live. My understanding is they will be used for community purposes, like the Wonderverse quests and Twitter account, as well as on the POKT website.
Seems like these can be swapped out for any high quality artwork that represents POKT concepts, rather than requiring specific art for the steps of the quest.
The images will need to be exported in this horizontal banner format, so that might be the primary consideration.
There are a handful of diagrammatic illustrations currently in use. I will assume that new illustrations will compliment, replace, or be used interchangeably with these.
I will continue to iterate on this style in the new designs.
Images will be exported to accommodate a mobile-first design that also looks great on larger screens.
My next mission is to figure out the appropriate visual language for POKT. I found some examples from the older site design, including examples of “basic” forms, “complex” forms, and a character named Nodey.
We want to introduce some vibrant color to inject some energy into the generally monochrome POKT brand.
We like strong/bold visual forms. Pronounced shapes, contrasting colors, relatively thick line weights.
Most competitors (and let’s be honest most tech projects) lean into the axiometric, cubic, factory-esque production flow theme. The more infra-related, the more the project seems to double down on “cubes on an assembly line” prompts lol. I will try to maintain the feeling of modularity/composability while also experimenting on aesthetics that feel fresh and unexpected. If this doesn’t go over well, I can always move back towards the safe and familiar.
Next, I started looking at illustrations that carry some of these formal themes, but push into some different feeling spaces. Here’s a selection of stuff that is currently inspiring to look at and think about:
Graphic images with strong shapes and lines, but introducing more curves and biomorphic shapes to breath some life into the mix. POKT is people and community, as well as data and complex lattice networks. Let’s move towards POKT as essential human coordination tech and move a little bit away from cold hard infra?
Lots of color happening here! I might try some experiments on more limited color palettes, some with rainbow-tastic gradients, some more greyscale… the nice thing about designing for a warm black background (the main color POKT uses) is that all colors look good next to it! Probably going to lean into the elegant use of rainbow spectrums and transparency.
What remains to be understood is how many illustrations are needed, how complex or simple the images should be, and if there is specific content/concept that require illustration or if the images I produce should be adaptable for any placement/use. We have a few weeks to figure out these details though.
@T-W, thank you for the thought and inspiration you shared here.
Let’s connect some time to discuss before you go too far down this road though as I’m concened that there’s overlap with work I’m about to kick off and I want to make sure we use your talent appropriately!
