New INDEX logo for better brand recognition

INDEX token needs a nice slick logo. Let’s gather some ideas here.

Edit 1

Index Design Inspiration Board

Feel free to add any of your design inspirations in here for the Index branding.

Edit 2

The Schedule

Session 1 - Branding

Build a cohesive brand identity for the Index Coop that informs our visuals, typefaces, colors, images, copy, tone, etc.

MONDAY
Tuesday at 12:30 AM → Tuesday at 3:30 AM

Session 2 - Logo Kick Off

Kick off the logo creation sessions. Pull inspiration from other types of logos and start thinking about the direction we want to take Index Coop’s logo.

TUESDAY
November 25, 2020 12:30 AM → November 25, 2020 3:30 AM

Session 3 - Logo Exploration

Kick off the logo creation sessions. Pull inspiration from other types of logos and start thinking about the direction we want to take Index Coop’s logo.

WEDNESDAY
November 26, 2020 12:30 AM → November 26, 2020 3:30 AM

Session 4 - Logo Voting

Kick off the logo creation sessions. Pull inspiration from other types of logos and start thinking about the direction we want to take Index Coop’s logo.

TUESDAY
December 2, 2020 12:30 AM → December 2, 2020 3:30 AM

Let me know if these time work for you. If it does, we can make an announcement on the Index Coop Twitter account and ping other designers to invite them to the session.

3 Likes

@s7rukk Nice, we can definitely start gathering some ideas in here. It’d be great to see if we can gather interest from designers to create the new Index logo.

I’ve seen an interesting event hosted by Zora where they live streamed a collaborative design session with a bunch of people. At one point, they had about 20 or so people designing together in a shared Figma board together, and they landed on a new logo that they now use on their Twitter page.

I’ll help make designs, but do you know of any designers that would want to join and help create a new logo?

3 Likes

Agree logo could use updating. I think paying an actual branding agency to figure out things like voice/messaging, refine vision/mission, maybe even figure out how we brand indexes vs Coop itself. If we are going to change something this important we should make sure it’s done right

I agree with @Kiba, i think we need an agency :slight_smile:

Lowkey I kinda like the owl. Easy to meme :wink:

3 Likes

Owlie is mad cute can’t front. But it’s just a normal emoji, probably want some thing trademarkable.

@Etienne I know a lot great branding agencies and a few that do a lot of work in blockchain if we are interested. I think we need to “find ourselves” more before we approach them though. The vision/principles @DarkForestCapital are working on will definitely help with that (maybe done this week?)

2 Likes

I didn’t realize that Owlie was “just” an emoji before your post :smiley:

I agree on the idea of creating a new logo. I don’t really mind who is executing though : Someone from the crypto-space, or an agency, or a competition.
If we are talking about branding, are we also talking about names of things ? Like the Index Coop, the INDEX Token, etc… Or are talking about cosmetic/graphical branding ?

Branding is everything. Naming, logos, typography, the tone of voice we use in communications, motion design on animations, the vibe in the air when we host an event. Even calling each other Owls is branding. It’s. the outward expression of who we are, but we need to figure out who we are first before anyone can help us externalize it. IMO we’re kinda in the teenager phase where we want to be grownups but we haven’t quite figured everything out yet

4 Likes

+1 to Kiba’s post. The first step is creating an overall brand guideline. This is usually the base for a new brand that helps create the direction for where we take the logo as well as any other materials we create afterwards like marketing materials, designs for the site, video script, etc.

Key Points:

  1. What’s the vision that the branding should reflect?
  2. What does an inspiration/mood board for the Index Coop look like?
  3. What are the logos, typefaces, colors, and images that reflect the Index Coop?

For #1, here’s a snippet from the vision post that I think captures what the Index Coop is about:

Index Coop’s vision is to create the most reliable, best-in-class financial products that allow anyone around the world to easily achieve financial freedom. You can imagine the Index Coop like a crypto Blackrock. The Coop creates crypto ETPs (Exchange traded products) that help users get broad exposure to different sectors or themes across crypto. As a decentralized organization this vision cannot be realised without a devotion to open communication, coordination and collaboration. Our diverse community at Index Coop is made of activist investors, blockchain developers, growth marketers, and governance operators contributing to our vision.

For #2 and #3, I have a Figma board here where we can add our branding inspiration, as well as any logo, typeface, color and image inspirations as well. It should help us create a foundation for where we want to take the overall branding direction for the Index Coop, and if we want to take this to an agency, we can show them this as the initial direction since that’s one of the first questions they’ll ask if we choose to go down that route.

Index Design Inspiration Board

Feel free to add any of your design inspirations in here for the Index branding.

1 Like

You’re so edgy Inje lol

Edit: By the way I wrote that vision/description you quoted but it hasn’t been “accepted” yet as far as I’m aware. We can run with it if you guys want but it could use some work

:wink:

Yeah, I took it from the vision doc that you, Paul, Felix, and maybe some others were working on. Imo, besides some polish, I think it gets the main vision across for us to use as a base for the branding guide.

Great, I put the link into the initial post :100:

20201118_222024_0000

It’s based on a logo im using for my web store (satoshiabloh.com). But I can offer it for Index if you like it enough to run with it. Big fan of the project :slight_smile:

1 Like

Hey Owls :owl:,

I’m proposing a schedule for next week and the week after to work on brand identity and logo creation. I’ll be hosting a live stream with an open Figma board where we can collaborate on the new brand identity and logo together.

The Schedule

Session 1 - Branding

Build a cohesive brand identity for the Index Coop that informs our visuals, typefaces, colors, images, copy, tone, etc.

MONDAY
2020-11-23T23:30:00Z2020-11-24T02:30:00Z

Session 2 - Logo Kick Off

Kick off the logo creation sessions. Pull inspiration from other types of logos and start thinking about the direction we want to take Index Coop’s logo.

TUESDAY
2020-11-24T23:30:00Z2020-11-25T02:30:00Z

Session 3 - Logo Exploration

Kick off the logo creation sessions. Pull inspiration from other types of logos and start thinking about the direction we want to take Index Coop’s logo.

WEDNESDAY
2020-11-25T23:30:00Z2020-11-26T02:30:00Z

Session 4 - Logo Voting

Kick off the logo creation sessions. Pull inspiration from other types of logos and start thinking about the direction we want to take Index Coop’s logo.

TUESDAY
2020-12-01T23:30:00Z2020-12-02T02:30:00Z

Let me know if these time work for you. If it does, we can make an announcement on the Index Coop Twitter account and ping other designers to invite them to the session.

4 Likes

I’m not a branding expert but I was a brand strategy intern at ConsenSys for 6 months and I work with a lot of brand and design strategy teams so I want to clarify some things for people.

  1. a logo isn’t your brand, brand is a much deeper concept as I touched on earlier.
  2. Theres nothing blatantly wrong with our brand now (it’s actually great) so I don’t see a reason to change one small (yet obvious) part of it.
  3. We don’t have an identity yet as a community. We can create a new logo now and that’s all good but if we ‘rebrand’ now I imagine we will be redoing it again in the not too distant future again as we evolve.

If we are doing this seriously it should take at least a couple weeks to really figure out the brand identity (mission/vision, personality, style exploration + convergence) before going into logo work. This is why I suggested using an agency if we are going to move forward so that this all gets done right and it’s good to have external facilitators for this process (from what I’ve seen in my experience)

2 Likes

Live stream and Kibas comments = :star: