Re-branding Matic Network
Say Hello to the new & improved Matic as the story unfolds!
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How did it all begin? — The Story
Matic existed since long, even before the firm took actual shape in Nov 2017. We existed in ideas, in research, in the wishes, a missing piece that could boost the blockchain community in India and *ahem* also the world to the next level.
It all started as a pure research effort back in Nov 2017 when Jaynti, CEO of Matic Network started looking to find scaling solutions for end-user products. Plasma was an obvious choice. Jaynti started contributing prolifically to Plasma, with ours being one of the first implementations of Plasma MVP. Soon we realized that all the proposed plasma implementations had usability as well as scaling issues.
Thus Matic happened!
What is Matic Network?
We started working on an account based implementation of Plasma which is the basis of Matic Network today. The idea and technology evolved into the current shape of Matic which essentially is a network of POS sidechains with Plasma security guarantee for assets.
But why? Decentralized Apps are making huge progress but the current blockchain ecosystem is not prepared to scale as per the demand. We aim to change that by not only achieving scale but also simplifying the interaction for Dapp Users. We want to make interacting with the decentralized ecosystem so simple that users should be able to use DApps without worrying about the complexity of the system underneath.
Having said that, we’ve been busy building Matic Network’s core components & while at it we have been recognized for our work.
The scaling platform is Matic’s main focus and after a long period of development, we are happy to inform the community that we will be launching the Matic alpha net soon. This will enable you to test the features and user experience of the network. Launch details will be shared in an upcoming post.
Apart from the Matic Network protocol that will enable higher throughput on sidechains, the Matic team has also developed tools to help developers and users interact with the Matic network.
Wallet: Matic is building a wallet that helps you manage your Ethereum accounts, wallets and contracts easily and securely. Read more about the development progress about Wallet in Technical Update article.
Dagger: Dagger is a real-time Ethereum notification engine, it provides a way to listen to incoming and outgoing transactions from accounts and contracts, as well as logs. Read about our Dagger for Ethereum + Zapier Integration
Click to know more about what Matic has been building?
Supporting budding developers —
Matic is focused on building & nurturing strong blockchain communities & thus we have been continuously providing support to budding devs through Hackathons & our recently launched DApp Development Course.
Some of the major Hackathons and community events that Matic has been part of are :
- ETHSingapore
- ETHIndia, Bangalore
- Binance SAFU Hackathon
- DApp Development Course
We have seen our community grow over the period and we have received continuous appreciation & support from the community.
So why did we ‘Re-brand’ after all?
Initially, after recruiting the core team, we knew we wanted to build Matic’s infra and it’s supporting applications first. We were committed to this vision and still are. It’s because of this we did not focus a lot on the website. Instead, we took a minimalist approach of using just 3 colours throughout our website. Jaynti himself designed the logo on Figma.
Logo:
Here is the snapshot of our website’s very first version:
Our website was, plainly speaking, bare minimum. Even the fonts used on the website were system fonts.
While we were grinding it out day by day and putting in the work to build Matic, we realized that our branding should mirror our beliefs and represent the idea & the vision Matic is working on.
What went under the hood?
Rebranding is a pain in the butt, but it’s worth it.
To proceed, we zeroed in on an agency who would help us in creating a killer website, logo and wallet app. We sat down with the agency, told them what we wanted, discussed on details and finally, we shook hands. Life was good :)
Fast forward a month from then, the resulting website design was shaky, there were no UX elements applied and overall it just looked a coloured version of our earlier website. This was not something that we had in mind when we set out to rebrand. We had given the agency a free hand but we were disappointed with the end result.
We ultimately had to scrap that website and this episode left us scratching our heads. Our thought was that if we could hire an agency to design the website, them being experts in this field and we would not need to be heavily involved, but we realized that wasn’t the right approach.
We started again looking at agencies who could help us with the branding. Only this time, we realized that we would need to be involved in the entire process no matter what, even if it was a reputed agency or a recommended designer on Dribbble, who would be taking up the project.
After several rounds of interactions, we decided to go with Flair Digital. The guys at Flair understood our needs and our scepticism (probably we were too apprehensive based on our previous experience). They made us feel confident by explaining their entire process and defined our role in it at various stages.
We worked in close collaboration with Saul & his team to help us express ourselves. After considerable iterations and hard work, we are proud to share the results of this exercise with the community. We believe that our community will relate to the new identity that Matic will sport.
While ideating on re-branding Matic, our thoughts were to convey ‘Matic as a building block for the future of decentralization.’ Flair did a great job in understanding the objective & came up with a brilliant concept for Matic.
The Result
“We did not have any icon or logo unit for our brand name which made it difficult to recognize and left no lasting impressions.”
First came the logo
We received the first iteration of logos, one which was a subtle cog wheel with arrows on the border, and looked like a cube from the top, symbolizing blockchain ecosystem scalability. A very niche and minimalist take on the logo.
We sure did like the thought process and the design, by using warm colours we were really in awe of it. Although we did think that a couple more options would do no harm.
Flair produced two more options for us to select from.
Here are those two:
The second one was an abstraction of cube & arrows crossing in different directions that symbolizes blocks, scalability, expansion & mass adoption. Overall it gave a techie & nerdy feel. The shape of the logo was hard and had a conservative and reliable feel.
The third one gave a feeling of the skyrocketing chart representing rapid expansion, also symbolizing data & network. It had custom typography with small letters to balance out the overall vibe and feeling.
Then came the design that basically put all discussions to bed!
‘M’ from our brand name was smartly picked & redesigned to reflect the building block for the future of decentralization. An isometric M, with two connected blocks, come to an ‘M’, also symbolizing the Matic Network’s ‘Main Chain’ & ‘Side Chain’ connection.
Overall a ‘differentiating’ logo, that is not similar to the ‘standard’ ones in the crypto industry. This was the logo that got all of us excited about it. We literally discussed this one for quite some time, looking at it from different angles, throwing ideas around it. And thus we knew that this was going to be our Logo.
The following logo and variations were provided to us on the basis of our selected logo.
Two variations were selected from the options provided to us. Here are those two:
Further, we received the guidelines for the usage of our logo.
The Do’s & the Dont’s
Next up, Typography
When a company is designing a brand identity, a consistent set of fonts must be used — each with a specific purpose. Typography lets you create a certain atmosphere and have a personality. We knew that the fonts we chose needed to be well thought through because that’s what is going to be the face of our website and wallet app. It had to be easy, subtle and compact.
Our earlier font was Montserrat, which is really nice. It’s easy on the eyes and really good in print as well, but the only problem is that it takes too much readable space. That is something we didn’t want to compromise on for our wallet app. Although, we’ve been using Slack for our internal communications and we really liked Slack’s font, i.e. Lato. Flair then played around with Lato on different sections of the website and then confirmed Lato as our Primary font and Roboto as secondary.
Note — We have used Roboto on our Wallet app throughout as it is more compact.
And lastly, Blue is the Warmest Colour 😊
By now, we had complete faith in Flair’s work and knack of doing the right thing. They gave us a variety of options in shades of blue along with the Web Style Guide.
Look how cool they are 😊
Go check it out!
The new look of our Website & Wallet App is here! 🎉
The new website & wallet app will feature a much more vibrant colour scheme and an appealing design with strong visual references to our process & products.
Have a sneak peek into our new website design here:
Here are the screens of our Wallet App
Thanks for reading!
Here is the link to access our Brand Resources: Click here!
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