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Directing the rebranding of a cryptocurrency exchange platform.
Poloniex is a cryptocurrency exchange with a worldwide customer-base offering access to over 500 cryptocurrency trading pairs and a host of other cryptocurrency products. In March of 2021, we embarked in an effort to create a new logo and a rebranding of our entire platform.
During the cryptocurrency bull run of 2017/2018, Poloniex was known as the go-to place for altcoins (cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin) and was the #1 cryptocurrency exchange in terms of daily trading volume in the world. An acquisition by Circle Financial and then a subsequent spinout to an investment group led by Justin Sun resulted in a product with fractured branding, user experience, and codebase.
In March 2021, a settlement in a trademark disagreement mandated that we create a new logo and replace it by the end of September. We took this opportunity to update the branding on our entire platform over the course of six months.
My role during the project:
The Poloniex platform had been homegrown and eventually passed through many designers' hands after multiple acquisitions. Branding and copy were not applied consistently throughout our platform, and no design system was in place. I took stock of all aspects of the designs and tone of voice used throughout the website, our mobile apps, and on social media.
Design of the home page (left) and exchange page (right) when I arrive in January 2021.
I knew that before we could define our new logo and branding, we needed to understand where we came from as a company, who our customers were, and how our competitors were positioning themselves in the market. I split up the tasks between core team members and myself.
Samples from the competitive audit I put together with the help of my team.
With the learnings from our interviews and competitive audit, I put together a brand position framework that clearly identified the brand persona we wanted to project to our customers and the market. While there were a handful of exchanges that could claim they were "early" to the space, Poloniex had been the first to list many cryptocurrency tokens such as Ethereum. Poloniex was considered to be legendary by many early cryptocurrency traders, and I used that insight to craft the brand positioning statement.
Next, I wrote a creative brief that clearly articulated the requirements and the goal of the logo redesign exercise. With the approval of our product director and CEO, I started speaking to potential agencies that could help us design our new logo.
Brand position framework used to guideline the new logo design, branding and tone of voice.
Leveraging my network in the advertising industry, I was able to get several competitive bids that would work within our tight budget. Once I selected an agency, I worked closely with them to narrow down to two logo options.
Shortly after starting this process, our CEO requested that we also leverage a design team from one of his other companies to get options from a different perspective. I helped coordinate with the marketing director who oversaw the design team in China, so that we could present all logo options together. Ultimately, our CEO ended up picking one of the options from the agency I hired because it felt true to the original branding while still pushing forward with a modern look and feel.
The new logo our CEO selected. The presentation was prepared by our design agency.
In April, my product designer left the company, and I set out to hire a new product designer to take the lead on evolving the brand based on the new logo. Starting in June, under creative direction, my new designer worked through finalizing the brand colors and creating a simplified design system that we could launch quickly. I directed his efforts to make sure we followed the brand position and helped design additional assets.
Designs and artifacts from our rebranding efforts. I created the homepage wireframes (top left), and oversaw the rest of the designs created by my designer.
In parallel to the design exercise, I started doing a deep dive audit of our platform and created a detailed list of every place where we needed to update our logo and branding, and started coordinating with the key internal stakeholders. In late August we began development work to update our website, mobile applications and other owned properties (e.g. support site, career site).
Screenshot of checklist used to monitor status of updates pre and post launch.
We successfully launched our new logo and branding on time in September 2021. Feedback from our customers was overwhelmingly positive, and we used this opportunity to cut down on design debt across our website and mobile applications. In the subsequent months, we worked on a more comprehensive design system that began implementation in early 2022.
Poloniex web homepage and native app dashboard as of September 2021.
