Introducing the Method Rebrand
When we first launched Method Finance back in March, our goal was to be as agile as possible. There was a clear need among the DeFi community for an easier and more secure way for users to participate in liquidity mining programs. We didn’t want to waste any time solving for this need.
This meant de-prioritizing certain activities at times, so that we could focus all of our time and energy on making sure we were building a protocol that was secure and scalable. One of the areas we wanted to revisit from this time was the design/UX details.
No one on our original founding team is a designer by training. While we have all worked at top tech companies and a few of us have managed designers directly, none of us have ever received professional training. We opted to design the first version of Method Finance, including our logo/website/app, with our limited working knowledge of design systems.
For our initial launch this worked, and it was enough to propel us to top 50 on the OpenSea top NFT rankings, a top 1,000 token by market cap for most of our existence, and a community now in the thousands.
However, as is the case with any successful protocol, you eventually hit a point at which you must adapt in order to scale. For us, that meant hiring a professional UX designer with deep experience in DeFi.
Last month we brought on Sheep to help bring our brand and design system to the next level. We are excited to finally share what he has been working on.
Going deep on user research
When Sheep first joined the team, the first thing he told us was that he wanted to complete intensive user research. For our team this was music to our ears.
If you look at the most successful companies in the world. Whether it’s Airbnb, Amazon, etc. they all place a strong emphasis on talking to their community of users/customers.
We set up a ‘user interviews’ channel in Discord and Sheep facilitated over 15 online interviews with members of the Method Finance community.
He shared different mood boards, completed user testing and allowed the community to share their thoughts. What we found was an engaged and passionate community full of great ideas.
We could have just rushed into a logo based on our intuitions, but instead our community guided us in a better direction and we couldn’t be happier with the results.
Our new logo
Let’s start with the logo. After careful consideration and listening to users, we opted to stay with the familiar M logo. However, we wanted to put our own unique spin on it.
Our new M logo is both simple, yet abstract. At first glance you might not even notice that it’s an M, but as you look closer your brain begins to form the image.
In a lot of ways this is very representative of our protocol. Liquidity mining isn’t that new of a concept in DeFi, however the way in which we allow users to participate is.
We also opted to be more bold in our color choice, moving from a more subtle “blurple” color, to a more definitive purple as the background. This helps make the white M pop even more against the backdrop.
Method Finance is no longer trying to be subtle. We know how strong this protocol/community is, and we’re ready to show everyone. Our new logo represents this mindset.
Our new design system
When creating our new logo, we wanted to look at it in a more holistic way. That is why we created an entire new design system for Method Finance. Starting first with our font changes.
We’ve opted to move from a more generic IBM Plex Sans to a licensed version of Hanken Sans developed by Alfredo Marco Pradil.
We’ve also made some updates to our color scheme, adding a number of secondary colors to compliment our primary #5730AF in our logo.
What’s next
This is only the beginning of our design/brand refresh. For his next areas of focus, Sheep will begin applying our new design system to our marketing assets, website and Method app.
All of these updates couldn’t have come at a better time, as we prepare to make some big announcements regarding liquidity and our first partnership on Polygon!
As always, this is an iterative process and we are always looking to make updates as we progress. If you have any thoughts or feedback, feel free to contact us below.👇
