Mysten Labs
Mysten Labs is a web3 infrastructure company, dedicated to establishing true digital ownership for billions of people. Founded in September 2021 by four former Facebook engineers—Evan Cheng, Sam Blackshear, Adeniyi Abiodun, and George Danezis—who worked together at Facebook's Novi financial products unit. Cheng, previously the director of research and development at Novi, now serves as Mysten’s CEO.
The startup initially adopted a provisional identity for business documents. This project involved a comprehensive reimagining of the brand, strategy, positioning, resulting in a new voice and visual system crucial to effectively convey the organization's message: this is the most qualified team to build the decentralized future. Collaborating with Gretel, I led the rebranding efforts for Mysten Labs.
Research and Discovery
Before soliciting agencies for proposals I began the rebranding process by interviewing Mysten Labs stakeholders on the product, engineering and business development teams. Web3 has interesting and unique brand challenges stemming from the high level of community awareness and investment decentralized platforms bring. Educating myself on how the organization would like to position themselves in the world, along with nuances of the emerging Sui community was a critical step in ensuring that I could find the right partner for the project. The result of my conversations was an incipient brand framework, that served as the foundation for RFPs and helped focus where we needed support in developing the brand for Mysten Labs.
Gretel on boarded by conducting interviews with a wide swath of team members at leadership and management levels as well as all of the founders. Their process uncovered several key beliefs and distinguishing factors that were used to rework Mysten Labs’ mission statement and principles and laid the groundwork for the brand strategy.
Brand Strategy
Research is existential, and the significance of collaboration and inquisitiveness were underscored during the interview process. It became evident that the imperative for Mysten Labs’ brand was to generate enthusiasm around the focus, ambition, and collective spirit of the team. Beyond any product that could be built, the promise made to partners, academic and technology peers, and the crypto community is that Mysten Labs’ team and ethos are uniquely suited to lay the foundation for the next internet.
These insights were put into practice in the personality and voice guidelines. The '4Cs'—curious, courageous, collaborative, and confident—are active parameters for crafting text about the organization, products, and services. The tone aims to modulate between advancing the field and inspiring behaviors that further web3 initiatives. From social posts to press and thought leadership, Mysten Labs' voice demonstrates leadership, educates, supports innovation, and seeks to inspire builders.
Logo
Typography
The primary typeface is Mysten Walter Alte from Dinamo. Chosen for it’s timeless appeal, humanist and functional with bold precision that suits an engineering firm perfectly.
A significant aspect to the visual strategy are typographic illustrations. To achieve Dinamo crafted an open version of Walter. Evocative of the ‘forging path’ concept, the typeface is applicable as functional text and in graphic applications.
The secondary typeface is Fragment Mono. It's monospace technical aesthetic and pragmatic legibility works well in interactive elements and data visualization.
Color System
Primary and secondary colors. Bold Mysten red is quickly becoming associated with the brand. The system is loosely based on television test signal palette from the analog era.
Illustration Approach
Custom typeface, brand colors and gaming partner imagery in use. The illustrations visualize the 'forging path' strategy, the lines work navigates between perpendicular angles, quarter and half circle curve.
Motion Behaviors
The core behavior is forging paths. Dynamic and concise line movement emphasizes the action and reaction forces required to complete the form. The sharp, tight easing in the behavior is applied to three approaches: completing, cascading, and typing, providing a set of coherent applications for a variety of use cases and contexts.
Website
The core behavior is forging paths. Dynamic and concise line movement emphasizes the action and reaction forces required to complete the form. The sharp, tight easing in the behavior is applied to three approaches: completing, cascading, and typing, providing a set of coherent applications for a variety of use cases and contexts.
Project Team
Abhishek Kumar, Head of Design
Jen Kye, Head of Marketing
Patrick O'Rourke,
Brand Design and Project Lead