A few weeks ago we announced that we’d created a new logo for Art Blocks, a mark we call “lil squig.” The design and development of lil squig is a small (but key) part of the story of the strategic rebranding we’ve been working on at Art Blocks Design for over a year now. As we roll out our new web presence today, we’d like to fill you in on more of the story.
A quick recap:
In the summer of 2021 Art Blocks embarked on a rebrand with an (internationally well-known) design agency. In mid-September, Carolina de Bartolo, our Director of Design, was hired to manage the agency’s work and oversee the whole rebranding process. In partnership with that agency and another one, we went through an extensive process of defining and re-evaluating our brand positioning and strategy and developing an extensible visual identity system.
In the interest of making a year-long story short, we’ll skip over the “messy middle” and just say that we traveled down a metaphorical long (and squiggly) road toward our new brand. The trip came with plenty of detours, potholes, wrong turns, flat tires, and at least one major collision. However, despite our poor fuel economy, by mid-April this year, we had turned the corner and arrived at our destination with a shiny new lil brand mark, a lockup with a custom word mark, and the foundations of our visual system outlined in a basic brand guidelines document.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the components of our new brand.
Brand positioning
We don’t want to alarm you, but some of us on the design team here at Art Blocks are old enough to remember when “branding” used to be called “corporate identity.” We bring it up only to remind you that in order for a brand to hit the mark, it’s important for an organization to reflect upon itself–what it is, what it is not, who it is speaking to, who it wants to speak to, who it is for, where it lives, what it wants to become–now, next, and later.
At the end of an intensive process of contemplating these questions and deliberating upon them, we arrived at three brand pillars:
- Cultural relevance First and foremost, Art Blocks is about art and artists. We are elevating generative artists and their artwork specifically, but we don’t see the artwork on our platform as a break from the past. We have simply taken another step along the continuum. It’s all art!
- Creativity We are curious. Our artists are pushing the boundaries of what is possible using this medium.
- Community The magic of minting on Art Blocks creates a unique shared experience for artists and collectors, and the community at large. We celebrate our open community of creators and collectors. We invite all who are curious to participate.
Brand mark: Lil Squig
The keystone of our new brand is our new brand mark. Of course, we all love Chromie Squiggle here at Art Blocks. It is, of course, the very first project on the platform. Created by our founder, Snowfro, it is the proof of concept for Art Blocks.
Our lil squig is derived from Chromie Squiggle #7515, which had been chosen as the epitome of “normal” from amongst all the thousands of squiggles. Over time, however, we noticed ways that this squiggle wasn’t working as well as a logo as it did as a work of art. Below are the primary differences between lil squig and Chromie Squiggle #7515.
Stroke weight The stroke weight of lil squig is a bit thicker than a normal Chromie Squiggle so that it reads better at very small sizes, such as when it’s an avatar on a mobile device or when it’s on a business card.
Color The leftmost yellow part of the stroke has been color shifted to have more orange in it so that the lil squig’s shape remains clearly visible when it is on a white background.
Form The shape has been simplified. Compared to #7515, lil squig has fewer ups and downs on the right hand side. This simplified shape of lil squig helps it to resemble the letter A (for Art). This streamlining is another aspect of lil squig that helps it perform better as a logo, particularly at small sizes.
Even though lil squig isn’t a real Chromie Squiggle, we are very proud of its digital craftsmanship. It is constructed from more than 1,500 equally sized circles that make a smooth gradient of the RGB spectrum. In other words, it’s built just like the real thing, only lil-er.
Typefaces
Every great brand needs great typefaces. We sought out a neutral sans serif that would subordinate itself when it is next to any work of art, and one with a wide variety of weights. We chose two types designed by Kris Sowersby at Klim Type Foundry: Founders Grotesk and Söhne Breit (ICYMI briet is German for wide).
The wordmark “Art Blocks” sitting beside lil squig is based on Söhne Breit Dreiviertelfett. It visually subordinates to the lil squig yet it is another ownable design with a few modest but meaningful customizations. The letterforms have been condensed from the originals in the Söhne design, and some apertures were then opened up and the waist on the /k/was lowered for better legibility at small sizes. It also features an /rt/ ligature, which improves letterspacing.
Colors
It was hard to pick from all the colors of the rainbow but we managed to narrow it down to six primary brand colors. Each is a point along the ultra-saturated gradient of colors in lil squig (and Chromie Squiggle).
Our squiggly brand also includes several gradients, including a special full-spectrum gradient that is created by flattening out the lil squig. Notice the uneven proportions of color along the gradient because it has been derived directly from lil squig.
Website
When it came to putting the brand into action, the first major application was building a new website. Art Blocks already has a “home” in Marfa, Texas, but we needed a comprehensive home on the web. With an ethos of nurturing artists and cultivating community, it was important to us to create an inviting locale for anyone anywhere in the world to pop by for a visit.
A beautiful online environment that would elevate the artwork was a given. Generative or algorithmic art can easily be misunderstood (and dismissed) as if it were artwork entirely produced by computers. Using lots of photography of people and of three-dimensional spaces goes a long way toward humanizing our artists and their artwork. And because generative art is less familiar than traditional art or one-off NFTs, we wanted the site to display multiple mints as often as possible, as a way to visually express how a single generative art project consists of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of outputs.
Besides integrating the new branding into the product design (UI/UX of our minting technology and a gigantic database of artwork and artists), we now provide a number of pages of content about our artists as well as further info about generative art, our company, and our team. And speaking of our team, aren’t they 🔥? The design team would like to give a shoutout to everyone at Art Blocks because each and every one of you helped this brand and this website come to life. This brand is for you just as much as it is for the AB community and the whole wide world.
Finally, we’d like to mention our new online journal, Spectrum. Note that its wordmark has a /tr/ ligature as a nod to the ligature in our Art Blocks wordmark and a vertical ellipsis as a reference to the idea of “more.” This is your convenient one-stop shop for artist interviews, educational information, company news, and our very lively and abundant video and audio content, including After Dinner Mints, Minters & Makers, plus our recorded Pre-drop Talks, and AMAs. Hey, you’re reading Spectrum right now! We’re glad you made it, and hope to see you again soon.
Well, that’s all for now, but stay tuned!
Over here in the design department at Art Blocks, we’re thrilled to share the new look of Art Blocks with the world today, and we hope you will find it as special as we intend it to be–at least just a lil bit.
We’ll have more design delights to share with you soon. Keep an eye out for the “Art Blocks Design” byline here on Spectrum and let us know if there is any design content you’d like us to write more about.
A few weeks ago we announced that we’d created a new logo for Art Blocks, a mark we call “lil squig.” The design and development of lil squig is a small (but key) part of the story of the strategic rebranding we’ve been working on at Art Blocks Design for over a year now. As we roll out our new web presence today, we’d like to fill you in on more of the story.
A quick recap:
In the summer of 2021 Art Blocks embarked on a rebrand with an (internationally well-known) design agency. In mid-September, Carolina de Bartolo, our Director of Design, was hired to manage the agency’s work and oversee the whole rebranding process. In partnership with that agency and another one, we went through an extensive process of defining and re-evaluating our brand positioning and strategy and developing an extensible visual identity system.
In the interest of making a year-long story short, we’ll skip over the “messy middle” and just say that we traveled down a metaphorical long (and squiggly) road toward our new brand. The trip came with plenty of detours, potholes, wrong turns, flat tires, and at least one major collision. However, despite our poor fuel economy, by mid-April this year, we had turned the corner and arrived at our destination with a shiny new lil brand mark, a lockup with a custom word mark, and the foundations of our visual system outlined in a basic brand guidelines document.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the components of our new brand.
Brand positioning
We don’t want to alarm you, but some of us on the design team here at Art Blocks are old enough to remember when “branding” used to be called “corporate identity.” We bring it up only to remind you that in order for a brand to hit the mark, it’s important for an organization to reflect upon itself–what it is, what it is not, who it is speaking to, who it wants to speak to, who it is for, where it lives, what it wants to become–now, next, and later.
At the end of an intensive process of contemplating these questions and deliberating upon them, we arrived at three brand pillars:
- Cultural relevance First and foremost, Art Blocks is about art and artists. We are elevating generative artists and their artwork specifically, but we don’t see the artwork on our platform as a break from the past. We have simply taken another step along the continuum. It’s all art!
- Creativity We are curious. Our artists are pushing the boundaries of what is possible using this medium.
- Community The magic of minting on Art Blocks creates a unique shared experience for artists and collectors, and the community at large. We celebrate our open community of creators and collectors. We invite all who are curious to participate.
Brand mark: Lil Squig
The keystone of our new brand is our new brand mark. Of course, we all love Chromie Squiggle here at Art Blocks. It is, of course, the very first project on the platform. Created by our founder, Snowfro, it is the proof of concept for Art Blocks.
Our lil squig is derived from Chromie Squiggle #7515, which had been chosen as the epitome of “normal” from amongst all the thousands of squiggles. Over time, however, we noticed ways that this squiggle wasn’t working as well as a logo as it did as a work of art. Below are the primary differences between lil squig and Chromie Squiggle #7515.
Stroke weight The stroke weight of lil squig is a bit thicker than a normal Chromie Squiggle so that it reads better at very small sizes, such as when it’s an avatar on a mobile device or when it’s on a business card.
Color The leftmost yellow part of the stroke has been color shifted to have more orange in it so that the lil squig’s shape remains clearly visible when it is on a white background.
Form The shape has been simplified. Compared to #7515, lil squig has fewer ups and downs on the right hand side. This simplified shape of lil squig helps it to resemble the letter A (for Art). This streamlining is another aspect of lil squig that helps it perform better as a logo, particularly at small sizes.
Even though lil squig isn’t a real Chromie Squiggle, we are very proud of its digital craftsmanship. It is constructed from more than 1,500 equally sized circles that make a smooth gradient of the RGB spectrum. In other words, it’s built just like the real thing, only lil-er.
Typefaces
Every great brand needs great typefaces. We sought out a neutral sans serif that would subordinate itself when it is next to any work of art, and one with a wide variety of weights. We chose two types designed by Kris Sowersby at Klim Type Foundry: Founders Grotesk and Söhne Breit (ICYMI briet is German for wide).
The wordmark “Art Blocks” sitting beside lil squig is based on Söhne Breit Dreiviertelfett. It visually subordinates to the lil squig yet it is another ownable design with a few modest but meaningful customizations. The letterforms have been condensed from the originals in the Söhne design, and some apertures were then opened up and the waist on the /k/was lowered for better legibility at small sizes. It also features an /rt/ ligature, which improves letterspacing.
Colors
It was hard to pick from all the colors of the rainbow but we managed to narrow it down to six primary brand colors. Each is a point along the ultra-saturated gradient of colors in lil squig (and Chromie Squiggle).
Our squiggly brand also includes several gradients, including a special full-spectrum gradient that is created by flattening out the lil squig. Notice the uneven proportions of color along the gradient because it has been derived directly from lil squig.
Website
When it came to putting the brand into action, the first major application was building a new website. Art Blocks already has a “home” in Marfa, Texas, but we needed a comprehensive home on the web. With an ethos of nurturing artists and cultivating community, it was important to us to create an inviting locale for anyone anywhere in the world to pop by for a visit.
A beautiful online environment that would elevate the artwork was a given. Generative or algorithmic art can easily be misunderstood (and dismissed) as if it were artwork entirely produced by computers. Using lots of photography of people and of three-dimensional spaces goes a long way toward humanizing our artists and their artwork. And because generative art is less familiar than traditional art or one-off NFTs, we wanted the site to display multiple mints as often as possible, as a way to visually express how a single generative art project consists of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of outputs.
Besides integrating the new branding into the product design (UI/UX of our minting technology and a gigantic database of artwork and artists), we now provide a number of pages of content about our artists as well as further info about generative art, our company, and our team. And speaking of our team, aren’t they 🔥? The design team would like to give a shoutout to everyone at Art Blocks because each and every one of you helped this brand and this website come to life. This brand is for you just as much as it is for the AB community and the whole wide world.
Finally, we’d like to mention our new online journal, Spectrum. Note that its wordmark has a /tr/ ligature as a nod to the ligature in our Art Blocks wordmark and a vertical ellipsis as a reference to the idea of “more.” This is your convenient one-stop shop for artist interviews, educational information, company news, and our very lively and abundant video and audio content, including After Dinner Mints, Minters & Makers, plus our recorded Pre-drop Talks, and AMAs. Hey, you’re reading Spectrum right now! We’re glad you made it, and hope to see you again soon.
Well, that’s all for now, but stay tuned!
Over here in the design department at Art Blocks, we’re thrilled to share the new look of Art Blocks with the world today, and we hope you will find it as special as we intend it to be–at least just a lil bit.
We’ll have more design delights to share with you soon. Keep an eye out for the “Art Blocks Design” byline here on Spectrum and let us know if there is any design content you’d like us to write more about.
A few weeks ago we announced that we’d created a new logo for Art Blocks, a mark we call “lil squig.” The design and development of lil squig is a small (but key) part of the story of the strategic rebranding we’ve been working on at Art Blocks Design for over a year now. As we roll out our new web presence today, we’d like to fill you in on more of the story.
A quick recap:
In the summer of 2021 Art Blocks embarked on a rebrand with an (internationally well-known) design agency. In mid-September, Carolina de Bartolo, our Director of Design, was hired to manage the agency’s work and oversee the whole rebranding process. In partnership with that agency and another one, we went through an extensive process of defining and re-evaluating our brand positioning and strategy and developing an extensible visual identity system.
In the interest of making a year-long story short, we’ll skip over the “messy middle” and just say that we traveled down a metaphorical long (and squiggly) road toward our new brand. The trip came with plenty of detours, potholes, wrong turns, flat tires, and at least one major collision. However, despite our poor fuel economy, by mid-April this year, we had turned the corner and arrived at our destination with a shiny new lil brand mark, a lockup with a custom word mark, and the foundations of our visual system outlined in a basic brand guidelines document.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the components of our new brand.
Brand positioning
We don’t want to alarm you, but some of us on the design team here at Art Blocks are old enough to remember when “branding” used to be called “corporate identity.” We bring it up only to remind you that in order for a brand to hit the mark, it’s important for an organization to reflect upon itself–what it is, what it is not, who it is speaking to, who it wants to speak to, who it is for, where it lives, what it wants to become–now, next, and later.
At the end of an intensive process of contemplating these questions and deliberating upon them, we arrived at three brand pillars:
- Cultural relevance First and foremost, Art Blocks is about art and artists. We are elevating generative artists and their artwork specifically, but we don’t see the artwork on our platform as a break from the past. We have simply taken another step along the continuum. It’s all art!
- Creativity We are curious. Our artists are pushing the boundaries of what is possible using this medium.
- Community The magic of minting on Art Blocks creates a unique shared experience for artists and collectors, and the community at large. We celebrate our open community of creators and collectors. We invite all who are curious to participate.
Brand mark: Lil Squig
The keystone of our new brand is our new brand mark. Of course, we all love Chromie Squiggle here at Art Blocks. It is, of course, the very first project on the platform. Created by our founder, Snowfro, it is the proof of concept for Art Blocks.
Our lil squig is derived from Chromie Squiggle #7515, which had been chosen as the epitome of “normal” from amongst all the thousands of squiggles. Over time, however, we noticed ways that this squiggle wasn’t working as well as a logo as it did as a work of art. Below are the primary differences between lil squig and Chromie Squiggle #7515.
Stroke weight The stroke weight of lil squig is a bit thicker than a normal Chromie Squiggle so that it reads better at very small sizes, such as when it’s an avatar on a mobile device or when it’s on a business card.
Color The leftmost yellow part of the stroke has been color shifted to have more orange in it so that the lil squig’s shape remains clearly visible when it is on a white background.
Form The shape has been simplified. Compared to #7515, lil squig has fewer ups and downs on the right hand side. This simplified shape of lil squig helps it to resemble the letter A (for Art). This streamlining is another aspect of lil squig that helps it perform better as a logo, particularly at small sizes.
Even though lil squig isn’t a real Chromie Squiggle, we are very proud of its digital craftsmanship. It is constructed from more than 1,500 equally sized circles that make a smooth gradient of the RGB spectrum. In other words, it’s built just like the real thing, only lil-er.
Typefaces
Every great brand needs great typefaces. We sought out a neutral sans serif that would subordinate itself when it is next to any work of art, and one with a wide variety of weights. We chose two types designed by Kris Sowersby at Klim Type Foundry: Founders Grotesk and Söhne Breit (ICYMI briet is German for wide).
The wordmark “Art Blocks” sitting beside lil squig is based on Söhne Breit Dreiviertelfett. It visually subordinates to the lil squig yet it is another ownable design with a few modest but meaningful customizations. The letterforms have been condensed from the originals in the Söhne design, and some apertures were then opened up and the waist on the /k/was lowered for better legibility at small sizes. It also features an /rt/ ligature, which improves letterspacing.
Colors
It was hard to pick from all the colors of the rainbow but we managed to narrow it down to six primary brand colors. Each is a point along the ultra-saturated gradient of colors in lil squig (and Chromie Squiggle).
Our squiggly brand also includes several gradients, including a special full-spectrum gradient that is created by flattening out the lil squig. Notice the uneven proportions of color along the gradient because it has been derived directly from lil squig.
Website
When it came to putting the brand into action, the first major application was building a new website. Art Blocks already has a “home” in Marfa, Texas, but we needed a comprehensive home on the web. With an ethos of nurturing artists and cultivating community, it was important to us to create an inviting locale for anyone anywhere in the world to pop by for a visit.
A beautiful online environment that would elevate the artwork was a given. Generative or algorithmic art can easily be misunderstood (and dismissed) as if it were artwork entirely produced by computers. Using lots of photography of people and of three-dimensional spaces goes a long way toward humanizing our artists and their artwork. And because generative art is less familiar than traditional art or one-off NFTs, we wanted the site to display multiple mints as often as possible, as a way to visually express how a single generative art project consists of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of outputs.
Besides integrating the new branding into the product design (UI/UX of our minting technology and a gigantic database of artwork and artists), we now provide a number of pages of content about our artists as well as further info about generative art, our company, and our team. And speaking of our team, aren’t they 🔥? The design team would like to give a shoutout to everyone at Art Blocks because each and every one of you helped this brand and this website come to life. This brand is for you just as much as it is for the AB community and the whole wide world.
Finally, we’d like to mention our new online journal, Spectrum. Note that its wordmark has a /tr/ ligature as a nod to the ligature in our Art Blocks wordmark and a vertical ellipsis as a reference to the idea of “more.” This is your convenient one-stop shop for artist interviews, educational information, company news, and our very lively and abundant video and audio content, including After Dinner Mints, Minters & Makers, plus our recorded Pre-drop Talks, and AMAs. Hey, you’re reading Spectrum right now! We’re glad you made it, and hope to see you again soon.
Well, that’s all for now, but stay tuned!
Over here in the design department at Art Blocks, we’re thrilled to share the new look of Art Blocks with the world today, and we hope you will find it as special as we intend it to be–at least just a lil bit.
We’ll have more design delights to share with you soon. Keep an eye out for the “Art Blocks Design” byline here on Spectrum and let us know if there is any design content you’d like us to write more about.
A few weeks ago we announced that we’d created a new logo for Art Blocks, a mark we call “lil squig.” The design and development of lil squig is a small (but key) part of the story of the strategic rebranding we’ve been working on at Art Blocks Design for over a year now. As we roll out our new web presence today, we’d like to fill you in on more of the story.
A quick recap:
In the summer of 2021 Art Blocks embarked on a rebrand with an (internationally well-known) design agency. In mid-September, Carolina de Bartolo, our Director of Design, was hired to manage the agency’s work and oversee the whole rebranding process. In partnership with that agency and another one, we went through an extensive process of defining and re-evaluating our brand positioning and strategy and developing an extensible visual identity system.
In the interest of making a year-long story short, we’ll skip over the “messy middle” and just say that we traveled down a metaphorical long (and squiggly) road toward our new brand. The trip came with plenty of detours, potholes, wrong turns, flat tires, and at least one major collision. However, despite our poor fuel economy, by mid-April this year, we had turned the corner and arrived at our destination with a shiny new lil brand mark, a lockup with a custom word mark, and the foundations of our visual system outlined in a basic brand guidelines document.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the components of our new brand.
Brand positioning
We don’t want to alarm you, but some of us on the design team here at Art Blocks are old enough to remember when “branding” used to be called “corporate identity.” We bring it up only to remind you that in order for a brand to hit the mark, it’s important for an organization to reflect upon itself–what it is, what it is not, who it is speaking to, who it wants to speak to, who it is for, where it lives, what it wants to become–now, next, and later.
At the end of an intensive process of contemplating these questions and deliberating upon them, we arrived at three brand pillars:
- Cultural relevance First and foremost, Art Blocks is about art and artists. We are elevating generative artists and their artwork specifically, but we don’t see the artwork on our platform as a break from the past. We have simply taken another step along the continuum. It’s all art!
- Creativity We are curious. Our artists are pushing the boundaries of what is possible using this medium.
- Community The magic of minting on Art Blocks creates a unique shared experience for artists and collectors, and the community at large. We celebrate our open community of creators and collectors. We invite all who are curious to participate.
Brand mark: Lil Squig
The keystone of our new brand is our new brand mark. Of course, we all love Chromie Squiggle here at Art Blocks. It is, of course, the very first project on the platform. Created by our founder, Snowfro, it is the proof of concept for Art Blocks.
Our lil squig is derived from Chromie Squiggle #7515, which had been chosen as the epitome of “normal” from amongst all the thousands of squiggles. Over time, however, we noticed ways that this squiggle wasn’t working as well as a logo as it did as a work of art. Below are the primary differences between lil squig and Chromie Squiggle #7515.
Stroke weight The stroke weight of lil squig is a bit thicker than a normal Chromie Squiggle so that it reads better at very small sizes, such as when it’s an avatar on a mobile device or when it’s on a business card.
Color The leftmost yellow part of the stroke has been color shifted to have more orange in it so that the lil squig’s shape remains clearly visible when it is on a white background.
Form The shape has been simplified. Compared to #7515, lil squig has fewer ups and downs on the right hand side. This simplified shape of lil squig helps it to resemble the letter A (for Art). This streamlining is another aspect of lil squig that helps it perform better as a logo, particularly at small sizes.
Even though lil squig isn’t a real Chromie Squiggle, we are very proud of its digital craftsmanship. It is constructed from more than 1,500 equally sized circles that make a smooth gradient of the RGB spectrum. In other words, it’s built just like the real thing, only lil-er.
Typefaces
Every great brand needs great typefaces. We sought out a neutral sans serif that would subordinate itself when it is next to any work of art, and one with a wide variety of weights. We chose two types designed by Kris Sowersby at Klim Type Foundry: Founders Grotesk and Söhne Breit (ICYMI briet is German for wide).
The wordmark “Art Blocks” sitting beside lil squig is based on Söhne Breit Dreiviertelfett. It visually subordinates to the lil squig yet it is another ownable design with a few modest but meaningful customizations. The letterforms have been condensed from the originals in the Söhne design, and some apertures were then opened up and the waist on the /k/was lowered for better legibility at small sizes. It also features an /rt/ ligature, which improves letterspacing.
Colors
It was hard to pick from all the colors of the rainbow but we managed to narrow it down to six primary brand colors. Each is a point along the ultra-saturated gradient of colors in lil squig (and Chromie Squiggle).
Our squiggly brand also includes several gradients, including a special full-spectrum gradient that is created by flattening out the lil squig. Notice the uneven proportions of color along the gradient because it has been derived directly from lil squig.
Website
When it came to putting the brand into action, the first major application was building a new website. Art Blocks already has a “home” in Marfa, Texas, but we needed a comprehensive home on the web. With an ethos of nurturing artists and cultivating community, it was important to us to create an inviting locale for anyone anywhere in the world to pop by for a visit.
A beautiful online environment that would elevate the artwork was a given. Generative or algorithmic art can easily be misunderstood (and dismissed) as if it were artwork entirely produced by computers. Using lots of photography of people and of three-dimensional spaces goes a long way toward humanizing our artists and their artwork. And because generative art is less familiar than traditional art or one-off NFTs, we wanted the site to display multiple mints as often as possible, as a way to visually express how a single generative art project consists of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of outputs.
Besides integrating the new branding into the product design (UI/UX of our minting technology and a gigantic database of artwork and artists), we now provide a number of pages of content about our artists as well as further info about generative art, our company, and our team. And speaking of our team, aren’t they 🔥? The design team would like to give a shoutout to everyone at Art Blocks because each and every one of you helped this brand and this website come to life. This brand is for you just as much as it is for the AB community and the whole wide world.
Finally, we’d like to mention our new online journal, Spectrum. Note that its wordmark has a /tr/ ligature as a nod to the ligature in our Art Blocks wordmark and a vertical ellipsis as a reference to the idea of “more.” This is your convenient one-stop shop for artist interviews, educational information, company news, and our very lively and abundant video and audio content, including After Dinner Mints, Minters & Makers, plus our recorded Pre-drop Talks, and AMAs. Hey, you’re reading Spectrum right now! We’re glad you made it, and hope to see you again soon.
Well, that’s all for now, but stay tuned!
Over here in the design department at Art Blocks, we’re thrilled to share the new look of Art Blocks with the world today, and we hope you will find it as special as we intend it to be–at least just a lil bit.
We’ll have more design delights to share with you soon. Keep an eye out for the “Art Blocks Design” byline here on Spectrum and let us know if there is any design content you’d like us to write more about.
A few weeks ago we announced that we’d created a new logo for Art Blocks, a mark we call “lil squig.” The design and development of lil squig is a small (but key) part of the story of the strategic rebranding we’ve been working on at Art Blocks Design for over a year now. As we roll out our new web presence today, we’d like to fill you in on more of the story.
A quick recap:
In the summer of 2021 Art Blocks embarked on a rebrand with an (internationally well-known) design agency. In mid-September, Carolina de Bartolo, our Director of Design, was hired to manage the agency’s work and oversee the whole rebranding process. In partnership with that agency and another one, we went through an extensive process of defining and re-evaluating our brand positioning and strategy and developing an extensible visual identity system.
In the interest of making a year-long story short, we’ll skip over the “messy middle” and just say that we traveled down a metaphorical long (and squiggly) road toward our new brand. The trip came with plenty of detours, potholes, wrong turns, flat tires, and at least one major collision. However, despite our poor fuel economy, by mid-April this year, we had turned the corner and arrived at our destination with a shiny new lil brand mark, a lockup with a custom word mark, and the foundations of our visual system outlined in a basic brand guidelines document.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the components of our new brand.
Brand positioning
We don’t want to alarm you, but some of us on the design team here at Art Blocks are old enough to remember when “branding” used to be called “corporate identity.” We bring it up only to remind you that in order for a brand to hit the mark, it’s important for an organization to reflect upon itself–what it is, what it is not, who it is speaking to, who it wants to speak to, who it is for, where it lives, what it wants to become–now, next, and later.
At the end of an intensive process of contemplating these questions and deliberating upon them, we arrived at three brand pillars:
- Cultural relevance First and foremost, Art Blocks is about art and artists. We are elevating generative artists and their artwork specifically, but we don’t see the artwork on our platform as a break from the past. We have simply taken another step along the continuum. It’s all art!
- Creativity We are curious. Our artists are pushing the boundaries of what is possible using this medium.
- Community The magic of minting on Art Blocks creates a unique shared experience for artists and collectors, and the community at large. We celebrate our open community of creators and collectors. We invite all who are curious to participate.
Brand mark: Lil Squig
The keystone of our new brand is our new brand mark. Of course, we all love Chromie Squiggle here at Art Blocks. It is, of course, the very first project on the platform. Created by our founder, Snowfro, it is the proof of concept for Art Blocks.
Our lil squig is derived from Chromie Squiggle #7515, which had been chosen as the epitome of “normal” from amongst all the thousands of squiggles. Over time, however, we noticed ways that this squiggle wasn’t working as well as a logo as it did as a work of art. Below are the primary differences between lil squig and Chromie Squiggle #7515.
Stroke weight The stroke weight of lil squig is a bit thicker than a normal Chromie Squiggle so that it reads better at very small sizes, such as when it’s an avatar on a mobile device or when it’s on a business card.
Color The leftmost yellow part of the stroke has been color shifted to have more orange in it so that the lil squig’s shape remains clearly visible when it is on a white background.
Form The shape has been simplified. Compared to #7515, lil squig has fewer ups and downs on the right hand side. This simplified shape of lil squig helps it to resemble the letter A (for Art). This streamlining is another aspect of lil squig that helps it perform better as a logo, particularly at small sizes.
Even though lil squig isn’t a real Chromie Squiggle, we are very proud of its digital craftsmanship. It is constructed from more than 1,500 equally sized circles that make a smooth gradient of the RGB spectrum. In other words, it’s built just like the real thing, only lil-er.
Typefaces
Every great brand needs great typefaces. We sought out a neutral sans serif that would subordinate itself when it is next to any work of art, and one with a wide variety of weights. We chose two types designed by Kris Sowersby at Klim Type Foundry: Founders Grotesk and Söhne Breit (ICYMI briet is German for wide).
The wordmark “Art Blocks” sitting beside lil squig is based on Söhne Breit Dreiviertelfett. It visually subordinates to the lil squig yet it is another ownable design with a few modest but meaningful customizations. The letterforms have been condensed from the originals in the Söhne design, and some apertures were then opened up and the waist on the /k/was lowered for better legibility at small sizes. It also features an /rt/ ligature, which improves letterspacing.
Colors
It was hard to pick from all the colors of the rainbow but we managed to narrow it down to six primary brand colors. Each is a point along the ultra-saturated gradient of colors in lil squig (and Chromie Squiggle).
Our squiggly brand also includes several gradients, including a special full-spectrum gradient that is created by flattening out the lil squig. Notice the uneven proportions of color along the gradient because it has been derived directly from lil squig.
Website
When it came to putting the brand into action, the first major application was building a new website. Art Blocks already has a “home” in Marfa, Texas, but we needed a comprehensive home on the web. With an ethos of nurturing artists and cultivating community, it was important to us to create an inviting locale for anyone anywhere in the world to pop by for a visit.
A beautiful online environment that would elevate the artwork was a given. Generative or algorithmic art can easily be misunderstood (and dismissed) as if it were artwork entirely produced by computers. Using lots of photography of people and of three-dimensional spaces goes a long way toward humanizing our artists and their artwork. And because generative art is less familiar than traditional art or one-off NFTs, we wanted the site to display multiple mints as often as possible, as a way to visually express how a single generative art project consists of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of outputs.
Besides integrating the new branding into the product design (UI/UX of our minting technology and a gigantic database of artwork and artists), we now provide a number of pages of content about our artists as well as further info about generative art, our company, and our team. And speaking of our team, aren’t they 🔥? The design team would like to give a shoutout to everyone at Art Blocks because each and every one of you helped this brand and this website come to life. This brand is for you just as much as it is for the AB community and the whole wide world.
Finally, we’d like to mention our new online journal, Spectrum. Note that its wordmark has a /tr/ ligature as a nod to the ligature in our Art Blocks wordmark and a vertical ellipsis as a reference to the idea of “more.” This is your convenient one-stop shop for artist interviews, educational information, company news, and our very lively and abundant video and audio content, including After Dinner Mints, Minters & Makers, plus our recorded Pre-drop Talks, and AMAs. Hey, you’re reading Spectrum right now! We’re glad you made it, and hope to see you again soon.
Well, that’s all for now, but stay tuned!
Over here in the design department at Art Blocks, we’re thrilled to share the new look of Art Blocks with the world today, and we hope you will find it as special as we intend it to be–at least just a lil bit.
We’ll have more design delights to share with you soon. Keep an eye out for the “Art Blocks Design” byline here on Spectrum and let us know if there is any design content you’d like us to write more about.
