Menten AI : Branding
The Orange Re-brand Formulation
Branding is a whole lot more than just a logo. Branding is bringing a set of cohesive features that a company utilizes to make them unique from their market. Branding comprises everything from the name and logo down to the language used and assets in the design.
The Re-brand Germination
The first client meeting was different for me as our client was remote; Menten AI was founded in Toronto but was now based in San Francisco. They were very passionate about their project and talked at great lengths about their protein innovation. From the first meeting they had mentioned they were not huge fans of their landing page, colour, or logo. This provided a great opportunity to re-brand Menten AI.
I re-branded Menten AI by creating a new logo and ensuring the design colour and shapes were cohesive with the company’s goals.
The Maud Menten Reaction
The name Menten is based on Maud Menten who studied medicine at the University of Toronto in 1916. She was the co-author of a research paper pioneering the relationship between the reaction of enzyme-substrate concentration.
It was great to see this nod to a female Toronto scientist from an originally Toronto based start-up company acknowledging their predecessors in the field. I really wanted to keep this in mind while branding Menten AI.
The Research
I continued my research by comparing Menten AI to the other competitors. Having a look at the competitors the trademark science colour is most often blue. Blue is often associated with calmness, trust, confidence, and professionalism — which makes sense for science. Looking into Menten’s competitors, most used shades of blues through their websites. The blue was most often seen in the header banner. Otherwise medical websites are very text heavy and white.
The Mood Board Exploration
I presented Menten AI with 4 mood boards which would help define their brand colour and fonts used.
My first mood board was inspired by protein pictures you would typically see in a biology textbook. The colours I would have used were likely shades of blue with dull reds. This is also mood board would have also coincided with the Protein Data Bank colour scheme (seen below).
This second mood board was inspired by the shape of the protein. As seen in the previous mood board board protein have a very bubbly organic structure. I found inspiration from bubbles, archways and organic textures. This mood board and tile had a much more airy feel with the use of lighter colours all the while being creative.
My third mood board was inspired by the chemical structure of protein.The bonds drawn out between elements are linear and polygons can be formed. This geometric/polygon shape was what was most inspiring. This led me to honeycombs which were a nice intersect between a protein polygon and the orange colour. The colours derived were much darker yellows and oranges as seen in honey.
Finally, my forth mood board was simply inspired by the colour orange. Interestingly, orange is thought of as the colour of warmth, adventure, success, creativity, confidence and even motivation. I wanted to portray a bold and creative mood using different shades of orange while still having an airy feel using white space. Roboto was used as a header font as it is a fairly mechanical and geometric font to compliment the design shapes. And open sans was paired with robots as body text.
The Decision Reverbation
When it came to the final decision, the Menten AI team chose the 4th mood board as they wanted to stick with the orange colour. So orange it was, and the designs began.
The Orange Design Experiment
I began by laying down my orange colour as well as trying to incorporate my contrast light blue into the design. Although the space was defining itself well, the colours were not working for this kind of company. Menten AI is looking to get funding and grow their brand; a “cute” light blue and illustrations will not give investors or partners a sense of trust or confidence.
Therefore, thinking the colours may be the issue, I initially tried switching out the teal blue for a brown. It was better, but still lacked that sense of “reliable scientists”.
I knew that I had to go back to the drawing board and look back at competitors. Something the competitors did well was displaying imagery, be it high quality images or 3D protein renders. So I decided to swap out all my illustrations and source images. The images I chose had a blue tone to them mimicking the medical feel while navigating an orange website. The hexagonal shape was used throughout to provide structure and for chemical structure while organic shapes were to mirror to 3D protein folds.
The Logo Formulation
As I designed the site, I was also trying to create the Menten AI logo. The first idea that I really wanted to work with was the Menten reaction as previously mentioned. I wanted to depict the reaction curve in the Menten AI logo.
Unfortunately, the M was not legible especially at smaller sizes.
This led me to look at protein structure. I looked at both chemical structure (linear design) and 3D structure (more 3D design).
Although they were more interesting they were very complicated and using gradients may not be best practice, once again especially at small sizes.
I wanted to work more of the AI into the logo, leading me to the hexagon shapes with the internal connections.
I also wanted to try a logo without any design simply using Menten AI.
Although an interesting and innovative looking logo, when user tested some could not make out the word Menten or AI and therefore this logo was not well suited for the site.
As I designed the website I found myself using the hexagon to mimic the chemical structure. I thought this would be nice to use in the logo. While starting with the M outside of the shape, when the logo gets extremely small the shape will be lost compared to letter(s) inside the hexagon. The M looked a lot nicer aesthetically with the hexagon shape as it felt like it continued the hexagon lines.
The final logo was the M within the hexagon; trying to keep as much of the hexagon shape as possible. The logo could be re-sized, any colour, and fit with the design.
The Branding Integration
It was such a great learning experience and opportunity to be able to re-brand Menten AI. It was not easy to use orange as a brand colour and let alone for a scientific website; however, the light orange with solid blue toned pictures did work for Menten AI.
To see how the Menten AI branding was integrated into the full website, please see the Menten AI case study.
