Branding Compound Grants
Jun 9, 2021
Originally posted on the Compound Grants website.
The Ask
Compound Grants is one of the early pioneers in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) with a mission to "provide grants to projects, ideas, and events that benefit Compound and its ecosystem." The Grants team sought to create a professional brand for their website and social media, aiming to appeal to potential grantees and the broader Compound community.
We had the opportunity to collaborate with both the Grants stakeholders and the Compound Labs team to develop a new brand identity.
Brand kit for Compound Grants Program
The Process
The goal was to create a professional brand for Compound Grants. Several key questions guided our process:
How should we differentiate the brand from other grant programs?
What values are important for the brand to convey?
Should the brand be independent of the current Compound brand or function as a "sub-brand"?
To address these questions, we explored how companies use sub-brands on social media, engaged with grant recipients about their experiences with the current program, conducted a workshop with the Compound Grants key stakeholders, and distributed a survey to gather additional stakeholders' opinions.
"Think Nike Air and Nike, or Google and Google Maps, as opposed to Best Buy and Geek Squad... a sub-brand, not a sister brand." — Jayson Hobby, Head of Design at Compound
Our research emphasized that the brand needed to feel professional and trustworthy, reflecting the responsibility of grantees who depend on Compound to fund their projects. Maintaining a strong association with the Compound parent brand was critical for building trust and familiarity—essential elements for the success of the Grants program.
How We Did It
We explored how the brand could be represented and shared across social media and the website. Our goal was to showcase the potential of the Grants program while maintaining the established trust and credibility of its parent, the Compound Protocol.
We struck a balance by using a waveform and gradient to symbolize progression without straying too far from Compound’s overarching brand identity. This visual approach communicated forward movement while reinforcing the reliability and professionalism of the Grants program.
Early exploration concepts
In parallel, we collaborated with the Compound design team as they developed a secondary brand logo for their product line. The gold-bronze gradient was chosen to help differentiate Grants as its own sub-brand and establish a professional, trustworthy feel. It also overtly reflects the purpose of the program—gold being a classic symbol of wealth, which Compound aims to share with the community through these cooperative grants. We are the first Compound sub-brand to use this new logo.
All the new brand elements are designed to work together to create a cohesive visual system. We created a brand kit for the Compound Grants team to capture and share how the brand could be scaled for future use.
You can see how we use the brand in more depth in this Figma File.