MakerDAO

Deep Work collaborated with MakerDAO to create an updated visual identity that brought more commercial focus to the design and content of their website. The goal of the revamp was to showcase MakerDAO's position as a market leader, highlight their product suite with clear brand identities, and establish clear visual and tone of voice guidelines that convey trust and security to be used across MakerDAO's design and communications. The result was an updated brand and fresh website that effectively presents all key information in a coherent and organized manner, helps onboard more people to the community and ecosystem, and establishes a clear identity for MakerDAO's products.
DAO
Brand and Visual Identity

To achieve these objectives, Deep Work conducted dynamic and interactive workshops that transformed scattered information into connected information and made the content easily navigable, and validated the workshops and designs through user testing. The total process took five weeks including producing all new brand assets.

The challenge

HMW convey trust / security through branding
HMW create a feeling of continuous 'we are live and vibrant' through the website
HMW make sure all the information is available (e.g. the existence of all products, all concepts)

The process

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Desktop design

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Desktop design

Mobile design

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Some of the design decisions we’ve made in order to help to improve the experience for the users:

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User research findings

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Component library

Deliverables

The project resulted in updated brand guidelines and a fresh website that effectively presents all key information in a coherent and organized manner, helps onboard more people to the community and ecosystem, and establishes a clear identity for MakerDAO's products. The updated brand guidelines identified new guidelines, added a new family of logos for all MakerDAO products, expanded the color palette, set specific typography, created base illustrations, and defined a tone of voice for communications. With the updated guidelines, all future assets align with MakerDAO's unique identity, conveying the same values and overcoming the problem of fragmented branded materials by moving from scattered to connected information. The revamped MakerDAO website provides an up-to-date commercial overview of MakerDAO, presents the Maker Protocol as a decentralized tech stack with a suite of sub-products that leverage the main product: The DAI stablecoin, and conveys transparency, stability, and security by visualizing all assets across the pages. The website's goal is to help onboard more people to the community and ecosystem and establish clear visual guidelines and tone of voice to use across all MakerDAO design and communications.

Team

Daniel Urquhart

Product Design

Justina Cukini

User Research

Olya Bazelevich

Illustrator

Collin

Copywriting

Charlie

Creative Direction and Workshop Facilitation

2 projects for

MakerDAO

Deep Work collaborated with MakerDAO to create an updated visual identity that brought more commercial focus to the design and content of their website. The goal of the revamp was to showcase MakerDAO's position as a market leader, highlight their product suite with clear brand identities, and establish clear visual and tone of voice guidelines that convey trust and security to be used across MakerDAO's design and communications. The result was an updated brand and fresh website that effectively presents all key information in a coherent and organized manner, helps onboard more people to the community and ecosystem, and establishes a clear identity for MakerDAO's products.
DAO
Brand and Visual Identity

To achieve these objectives, Deep Work conducted dynamic and interactive workshops that transformed scattered information into connected information and made the content easily navigable, and validated the workshops and designs through user testing. The total process took five weeks including producing all new brand assets.

Part I: Ethereum 2.0 Launchpad

Part I: Ethereum 2.0 Launchpad
The Ethereum 2.0 Launchpad helps anyone become a validator in the network. Validators are key to the more secure, scalable, and sustainable Ethereum ecosystem.
Product Design: Essentials
User experience & visual design, user testing;

Delivered in 1 week.

The challenge

How might we communicate hold/cold key management?
How might we have one single source of truth?
How might we educate on the underlying economics?

The process

We facilitated 3 days of collaborative workshops over Zoom & Miro, involving a diverse team contributiors from the Ethereum ecosystem.

Our designer and facilitator guided the team along the most important UX and UI considerations.

We discussed the biggest challenges, prioritised goals and sketched a user journey together.
Each team member created an individual hypothetical solution for a user interface with the to-be-designed Ethereum 2.0 Launchpad.
Upon review of the best ideas from the sketches, we together designed and designed the wireframes.

Desktop designs

Some of the design decisions we’ve made in order to help to improve the experience for the users:

Descriptive infograhpics set the right expectations in digestible bits of information
Illustrations and a casual tone reinforce a delightful experience
“Deliberate friction” in UX slows users down where important actions are taken

User research findings

1.
Users were interested in following how deposits progress. So we added a timeline.
2.
Users were able to learn why deposits only in 32 ETH increments are possible.
3.
Describing how to generate the keystore files in a simple language made ETH staking accessible also for novices.
4.
Non-technical users appreciated the educational material and guidance.

Deliverables

The project resulted in updated brand guidelines and a fresh website that effectively presents all key information in a coherent and organized manner, helps onboard more people to the community and ecosystem, and establishes a clear identity for MakerDAO's products. The updated brand guidelines identified new guidelines, added a new family of logos for all MakerDAO products, expanded the color palette, set specific typography, created base illustrations, and defined a tone of voice for communications. With the updated guidelines, all future assets align with MakerDAO's unique identity, conveying the same values and overcoming the problem of fragmented branded materials by moving from scattered to connected information. The revamped MakerDAO website provides an up-to-date commercial overview of MakerDAO, presents the Maker Protocol as a decentralized tech stack with a suite of sub-products that leverage the main product: The DAI stablecoin, and conveys transparency, stability, and security by visualizing all assets across the pages. The website's goal is to help onboard more people to the community and ecosystem and establish clear visual guidelines and tone of voice to use across all MakerDAO design and communications.

  • Desktop prototype
  • Team alignment
  • User testing report

Team

picture of Andrej - Creative Director
Andrej Berlin
Creative Direction
Facilitation
picture of Charlie - Creative Director
Charlie Ellington
Product Design
Georgia Rakusen
User Research

Part II: Ethereum — Public Identity

Part I: Ethereum 2.0 Launchpad
Ethereum as a network and an ecosystem of developers is separate from the Ethereum Foundation. Together with representatives from the Ethereum community, we explored the public perception of Ethereum as a “product”.
Branding and Visual Identity
Branding workshops and Visual Identity design.

Delivered in 2 weeks.

What, how, why?

Ethereum is seen as an open, scalable, decentralized, and extensible platform that provides 100% uptime, censorship resistence, and unparalleled network effects thus serving as the backbone of the decentralized internet.
It consists of decentralized tools and protocols that enable the individual and the collective to enter into new, positive-sum interactions.
To disrupt the current catastrophic trajectory of technology in society to find a more fair and open equilibrium that benefits both the individual and society as a whole.

The process

Two two-hour workshops to align on a common vision, purpse, values, audiences etc. helped us narrow down the public perception and personality of Ethereum as a product.
The team also explored different use cases and definitions for Ethereum, which increased overall clarity and alignment among participants.
Consequently, we facilitated a follow-up workshop to sketch how to visually communicate the public perception of Ethereum.

Desktop designs

Deliverables

The project resulted in updated brand guidelines and a fresh website that effectively presents all key information in a coherent and organized manner, helps onboard more people to the community and ecosystem, and establishes a clear identity for MakerDAO's products. The updated brand guidelines identified new guidelines, added a new family of logos for all MakerDAO products, expanded the color palette, set specific typography, created base illustrations, and defined a tone of voice for communications. With the updated guidelines, all future assets align with MakerDAO's unique identity, conveying the same values and overcoming the problem of fragmented branded materials by moving from scattered to connected information. The revamped MakerDAO website provides an up-to-date commercial overview of MakerDAO, presents the Maker Protocol as a decentralized tech stack with a suite of sub-products that leverage the main product: The DAI stablecoin, and conveys transparency, stability, and security by visualizing all assets across the pages. The website's goal is to help onboard more people to the community and ecosystem and establish clear visual guidelines and tone of voice to use across all MakerDAO design and communications.

  • Desktop prototype
  • Components library
  • Brand and Identity Workshops

Team

picture of Andrej - Creative Director
Andrej Berlin
Creative Direction
Facilitation
Rob Hamblen
Facilitation
picture of Charlie - Creative Director
Charlie Ellington
Product Design

Having a similar design challenge in mind?

Let’s work together

Price estimation

Product Design: Implementation Ready

4-week design process, starting at

$42,800

(or equivalent stablecoin)

Product Design: Prototype Sprint

9-day design process, starting at

$21,800

(or equivalent stablecoin)

Website Design

9-day design process, starting at

$21,800

(or equivalent stablecoin)

Branding, Visual Identity & Website

4-week design process, starting at

$59,800

(or equivalent stablecoin)

Product Design: Design Workstream

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