(Re)Branding Crown Platform
Support the initiative to help Crown strengthen its identity, and improve visual branding with the introduction of the “Pothead” mascot, sleek new website and a new logo.
The new Visual Brand Guide
It has been well over a year since Crown released its current website hosted on crownplatform.com. Its main purpose was to update an outdated web and present the project in a simple, fresh and easy-to-navigate form. Time flies in the cryptoverse and since its release in September 2020, the time has come for another update. This time, a major one!
Several months back, the community inititiated an out-of-the-box brainstorming with long-term community member and currently lead designer @kevin on various alternatives how to push the Crown brand in order to make it more appealing to newcomers. Kevin began playing with colours, fonts and of course the logo, creating a complex visual branding document in which he is proposing a new, sleek look for Crown. The result just feels positively fresh and relaxed. Please take your time to go through the full document in detail, we are looking forward to any feedback you might have!
Next to the new colours, fonts, icons, etc there is one key element which stands out, the Crown Platform logo. Few people have noticed that the current logo is broken in half — which is an undiserable aspect for a project. Kevin has corrected this pattern and proposed a new logo which has evolved into a much stronger symbol, yet it inherits the modern shapes of the existing one. It might look that this was an easy and straight forward task, but the opposite is true.
A brand new website: Back to the roots
Now, let us introduce our thinking for the proposed Crown Platform website re-design idea. After trying out few preliminary designs, we have concluded that this important task is not only about just another website update: it is about regaining an identity, which was lost during the long years. Crown has become standardized and boring, basically lost (design-wise) among the thousands of crypto projects out there which grow like mushrooms on a daily basis. We thought about what can be done to change this image and came up with a fresh idea: pushing a character we all know — the “Pothead” knight to the front-line.
The Pothead story
Those who have been around for a few years know, that the Pothead story officially began with the Crown community NFT competition in May 2020, during which a sticker set for Telegram and later Crown discord was created and introduced by Kevin. Yeah, few people knew what NFTs were in early 2020, yet the Crown community was already experimenting and pioneering the tech, registering cool stuff on the blockchain!
Later a Twitter poll was held throughout the Crown community to find a name for the newly created character, and among several cool name ideas, Pothead (a name which was proposed by long-term Crown contributor Crownfan) was naturally selected. Now Pothead (and his friends) are being called for active duty to the Crown front-line.
Important crypto trends supporting a mascot on the Crown web.
As mentioned above, the primary reason for pushing our friend Pothead is re-gaining a clear project image or even a MEME which will be “caught up” by newcomers who find their way to our website or other socials. There are however at least three other important and supporting reasons for this proposed step:
- The NFT segment: no doubt NFTs are materializing into a trend, which is going to stay with us long-term. Crown needs to react by trying to appeal as a sexy, reputable and carbon neutral NFT platform. We are of the opinion that Pothead can help in this respect as it might appeal to a younger audience, NFT artists / traders and other crypto participants searching for a positive looking yet well established blockchain. Additionally, Pothead is an excellent NFT airdrop candidate!
- The Metaverse: The Pothead character fits into the Metaverse and might have a place in this newly forming world. Sure, the Metaverse is being built by top global blockchains /companies and might seem far away for a small project like Crown, but we have to keep imagining and pushing our thoughts out there. All big things started from a simple idea!
- Crypto gaming — this is related to NFTs and Metaverse but worthy of having it as a single point. A lot of money is moving into crypto gaming projects. True, we don’t have any upcoming game as of now. It is however more likely that someone comes and builds it if they see Pothead rather than a standardized blue site. Again, this initiative can inspire a sleeping DAO participant.
The Proposal: how to pay for this
Hard costs
We are expecting that the hard cost for creating, implementing (and coding) the designs will run between 2 to 3k USD (approximately 80k CRW). A lot of the work was already completed as Kevin has spent several man-days on the Crown Brand Guide and new homepage, and crowncoin_knight on organizing the idea, its structure and the process.
Financing structure
Unfortunately, the Crown price has reached a low-point, and it is not desirable to completely sack our DAO proposal system. We are therefore seeking the following financing structure where we aim to combine our DAO funds with voluntary community donations:
- We are submitting a two months proposal for 2 x 25000 CRW (total 50k CRW)
- We are looking for community donations in the range of 25–35000 CRW. Some community members already started to donate and we currently have about 11k CRW raised. If you would like to make a donation please send it to our donation address:
CRWHWytozveGfoft6wHnuFEKPJ9A79wVBct8
The team
Our team currently consists of: Kevin — lead designer, Martin — lead coder, and crowncoin_knight — coordinator / idea maker.
What exactly is being delivered and when?
We aim to deliver:
- New Crown visual brand guide.
- New Crown website: includes full design and coding (mobile optimization too).
The team will strive hard to deliver the above as soon as possible, SUBJECT to 1. the proposal passing through the Crown DAO, 2. raising the requested funds and most importantly 3. code update being delivered. We will be coordinating the release with the marketing team and with the ongoing development updates being lead by Stonehedge and BlockMechanic in order for Crown to get one big push on both visual and technology level.
Do you want Crown to change its image? Please vote for it or consider donating CRW.
Do you have any questions? Please make sure you ask about anything we forgot to mention in the Crown discord.
