Rebranding Index Coop - Sequencing our DNA

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Author: @mestigoit
Help: @0x_Dev , @Mringz, @MrMadila, @codemathics (thanks guys for your input)

What is it about?

We would like to update, specify and refine the design of the Coop in order to get a common basis about our values and ideas. To do this we need as much input from the community so we have compiled a short survey.

The survey is important because each member who is committed to the Coop should also be reflected in the visual language. Sure, tastes differ, but we certainly share many common ideas. We want to do justice to this so that everyone can identify with it.

For example, if all who participate say the coop is ā€œdreamyā€ then the colors should be pastel-like, or even psychedelic? :slight_smile:

The results of this survey also give us the confidence not to plan or design something that misses the mark.

The purpose of the survey is to build a vision for our future design, so please express how you feel you would like the Coop to look and the impression you feel it should give going forward.

Maybe we can, or even should, repeat this in 1 or 2 years to see if or how the coop has changed.

Why is this important?

The appearance is currently inconsistent (see for example Emoji-owl vs. Black-white logo) or other things are not defined (font typeā€™s etc), although they should be (e.g. colors) or they could be more professional (website). These are things potential customers or even partners pay attention to, consciously or unconsciously. Compared to our competitors we are currently a little behind in some of these areas.

The survey doesnā€™t take long (between 5-10min), so please take a few moments and read everything carefully beforehand.

Here is the link to the survey:

Thanks for your time.

Martin

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Hey team! Thanks for putting this together- Iā€™m always blown away by the work you guys do and I am excited to see this moving forward.

I canā€™t wait to see what the survey results reveal!

(It looks like you guys have a solid foundation for a working group - potentially a working group focused on re-designing and revamping our websiteā€¦)

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Same! Really looking forward to what follows!

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Nice work @mestigoit -just completed the survey, thanks for putting it together!

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Yep awesome stuff going on right here. Hard to overstate just how important this is. Our shop windows are the screens scrolled through by millions. After product, design is everything! :sunglasses:

Looking forward to the results and Martins fantastic output as usual. :+1:

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Hello all,

first of all I would like to thank everyone who participated in the survey. I think if you took it seriously, not so easy maybe. :slight_smile:

We had a total of 13 participants. Of course I would have liked to have more (20), but the important thing is that the participants took it seriously. On the other hand, if you did it physically in a workshop, you would only have 4-7 participants.

There are results from me.

Here is the summary:

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Note: it is totally okay that we have identical values in different categories
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Here is a detailed overview of the individual values mentioned

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All raw data is freely available and can be viewed anonymously here:

And what does the whole thing mean now? I will post my conclusions here in the next 2 days. Until then, you are welcome to make your own :smile:

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Amazing work here! I am really looking forward to your next posts. We will look back on this survey as a defining moment in the evolution and maturity of our community.

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This is super important AF - thanks, Martin. Pumped to see how this translates into new designs for Index Coop.

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I still owe you all my assessment and an outlook.

What surprised me, what did I expect?
I wasnā€™t really surprised by the results overall. Is that good? Is that bad? Neither. What is important, however, is that what was previously just a feeling now has a pretty good data basis.

Together with our Guiding Principles and these values, we have a good foundation.

We as a Coop see ourselves as cooperative and passionate and, above all, professional, both internally and externally. We also want to present ourselves to our customers and partners as reliable, innovative and leaders in our field. We can distinguish ourselves from our competitors through competence, quality & efficiency.

But one thing I have noticed in conversations or text messages is that there are definitely two poles in the coop. One side finds the unorthodox self-portrayal authentic and appeals for its preservation:

ā€œIā€™d advocate to not drift away too much from this, e.g. into a cold, professional, financial service-like design.ā€

The other side canā€™t wait until the self-portrayal approaches a serious and adapted image:

ā€œI strongly oppose ugly frog and chad memes. I would aim for including actionable info in our marketing to stand out from the noise.ā€

It is not so important whether and which majorities there are. A goal has to be to be fair to both points of view. And if Iā€™m honest, that will be a bit of a challenge, if youā€™re serious about it.

The first step will be our website, because it is a central point of contact, and our site not only deserves a visual rework, but there is also a need to adapt the structure (there are more products now), fix technical problems and improve the UX (bugs, multi-lingual). Also we should try to clarify organizational things ( what belongs on the site, what in Gitbook (docs.indexcoop) for example).
For the visual I am very interested in arguments, which way the coop should go, do we give this to someone external, or do we use our own competences. Both certainly have their advantages and disadvantages.

I hope we can proceed here in Coop-style with velocity and focus :slight_smile:

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This is fantastic insight, would love to see it up on the docs page as it seems complimentary to our principles - if you feel it can be public facing of course.

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@mestigoit,

Fantastic work here which I think gives great inheritance to now realize in the brand framework doc weā€™ve been discussing.

I was also very interested in the fault line between edgy, crypto brand with dank memes and buttoned up, respectful crypto asset manager you can really trust with thousands/tens of thousands of your hard earned savings. Iā€™m biased towards the later with fun brand accents which still show hints that weā€™re quite cool - and were definitely cool in college :slight_smile: I also think we can have a deep, core brand framework, which we can slightly lean left or right from depending on the context. Eg landing page for institutional investors vs Twitter cards/assets for individual investor DeFi natives. You know what I mean.

Look forward to talking about this as we head to brand framework processā€¦ after MVI launch I guess .

:handshake: :beers:

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ā€œI strongly oppose ugly frog and chad memes. I would aim for including actionable info in our marketing to stand out from the noise.ā€

ngmi

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Could fit there, for sure. I hope we can include this on a rework ā€˜aboutā€™ page on our website, where we can bring this in line with something like a mission statement.

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Yes, I think it will be purposeful here to allow the greatest possible individual freedom, and where it becomes more structured, to proceed more regulated. sounds good, doesnā€™t it? :wink:

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I was also very interested in the fault line between edgy, crypto brand with dank memes and buttoned up, respectful crypto asset manager you can really trust with thousands/tens of thousands of your hard earned savings. Iā€™m biased towards the later with fun brand accents which still show hints that weā€™re quite cool - and were definitely cool in college :slight_smile:

I completely agree!

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On naming the owl, I think Indiana the Index Owl is a decent name. Could even give him an Indiana Jones style hat.

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The MVI logo competition has said nothing about the need for a unifying ā€˜familyā€™ indicator that would run across all products. DPI, MVI, ETH2X-FLI and all future logos need some kind of unifying feature that indicates they are Index Coop products. I like the owl as a mascot, but given that we are appealing to low tech passive investors looking for high-tech actively managed structured products, some type of cyborg owl, with ears profile mirrored across all present and future logos might split the generational difference between degens and boomers? Also, can we stop referring to just $FLI? How does that scale to a future with more than one FLI? TTI2x-FLI? DPI2x-FLI? renBTC2x-FLI? BED2x-FLI?

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I like the idea of a cyborg owl. Made me also think that a ā€œsteampunkā€ motif could work:

You could stitch the different products together under either of those themes.

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Welcome to the show. In general, I see it the same way you do, but this triangle has three sides. The coop (orga), the methodologists (Defi Pulse i.e.) and the platform (set). Until now it was so that the sovereignty over marketing and design lies with the respective Methodologists, i.e. they determine how the token logo looks like. This makes the products from Index Coop very inconsistent. I personally am glad that the naming of the tokens has a certain recognizability (CGI, FLI etc). I have written this many times elsewhere, I saw and still see this as a big disadvantage against our competitors. But as it is with disadvantages, we just have to turn them into our advantage.

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Which FLI? What if we release more leveraged tokens? What will we call them? I just checked my wallet and ETH2X-FLI is a very good description, but what if we decided to launch BED2X-FLIā€¦what will be the abbreviation & hashtag for that? Why is it that so many developers cannot grasp the importance of scalable naming conventions and reserved words and namespaces?