Check Out ShapeShift’s New Look
We’re excited to share these brand updates and why we made them.
Beginning this month, you might notice some changes to ShapeShift’s look. We’ve updated our logo, typeface, color palette, and imagery. These visual elements are the first step in this process, followed by our new platform that will be released in the near future.
As a company, we’re evolving. We’re adapting to our surroundings, we’re disrupting and challenging the world around us, and pushing forward into a new frontier.
For ShapeShift, our brand refresh is a homecoming. In other words, it’s about bringing us back — to ourselves. To ground us in what is true, and give us clarity and confidence in moving forward from here.
To remember what feels good to us, and how we love to operate in the world.
How We Got Here
ShapeShift’s emblematic Fox logo has undergone some changes since 2014. We knew that it was time to update elements of the brand to give it a more contemporary look, especially in advance of our plans for 2019.
Why the Fox?
Foxes tend to be subtle; flamboyance is usually not the fox’s style.
They prefer to remain inconspicuous and choose cunning wit over brute strength.
And in Celtic mythology, the fox is believed to be a guide and honored for its wisdom. The Celts understood that the fox knows its surroundings intimately, and they would rely upon the fox as their guide in the spirit world.
In Finnish mythology, the fox is depicted as cunning and smart. Although smaller, it outsmarts both the voracious wolf and the large and strong but not-so-cunning bear.
The Fox symbolizes the victory of intelligence and foresight over malevolence and brute strength.
New Logo & Typography
We’ve cleaned up our old logotype and created a new typographic hierarchy using the Open Sans and Merriweather type families.
Illustration Style
Our illustration style is a cornerstone of the new ShapeShift brand. The style is influenced by the art deco, futurism, and the constructivism art movements — the ones that emphasized speed, technology, youth, as well as craft and beauty. These same art movements also happened to influence literature, in particular, the futurists (George Orwell, Ayn Rand, Aldous Huxley). They believed in a decentralized future which is a nice subconscious tie to ShapeShift.
You’ll recognize the common themes of moving forward, pioneering, nature, and guiding light throughout the new ShapeShift.
With this redesign, we set out to retain all the weird, lovable elements that endeared our earliest customers to ShapeShift, while creating space for the brand to grow. We didn’t want to lose our heritage in the process, so we focused on capturing the essence of what ShapeShift has always been.
We didn’t want our brand to feel disjointed, so we created a more unified and recognizable system by weaving the new brand identity throughout all facets of ShapeShift — from our customers’ accounts to our website; from marketing to our support channels.
The Future is Bright
ShapeShift has always been on a mission to find a better world, both inside and out. We envision a world with a borderless financial system built on open, decentralized protocols.
The brand refresh symbolizes a deeper focus for ShapeShift. While we embrace the beauty in chaos, we understand in this crazy, ever-changing new industry, we may have to work a little harder at ensuring that our brand is clear, concise, and actually makes sense to people.
But we also know it’s not all about the destination; in fact, we live for the journey. We live for the thrill of discovery. Authenticity isn’t optional for us. It’s essential. We live for the freedom to just be ourselves.
And what matters is that we’re designing, building, and launching products with our customers in mind — ones that delight, protect, empower, and inspire those around us.
