The story of Pillar started three years ago with a successful ICO campaign when 40 volunteers made their dream happen. There was no Pillar brand back then, only a collective aspiration to create something that would later transform into what we now know as Gateway to Financial Freedom.
The mission to empower individuals, give them back control of their digital lives and finances became the very first dot to connect in this story. Being on the edge of progressive tech, we at Pillar prefer to call the dots — pixels.
The Pixel
A pixel is an inherent part of the digital environment. This point as a simple form and digital unit becomes a scalable object that can be as huge as any entity allowing for limitless expansion. Pixel is a truly universal visual metaphor capable to represent pretty much anything. I mean, literally anything.
For instance, Pillar company values:
1. Collaboration
2. Resilience
3. Empowerment
Concept
Grid
The identity is based on a pixel system forming a pattern. It works as a constructor. Pixels can fit snugly together or, conversely, be at a distance.
Structure
The dense structure appears to be a tight fit of pixels to each other. Pixels are big, seeking to fill most of the free space. The rare structure involves a pattern with a lot of space and a frequent mesh.
Pattern
Pixels are compiled into various structures enabling an infinite number of combinations. That’s the versatility!
By generating such patterns we are never at risk of running out of imagery – the possibilities are endless. The simplicity of pixel patterns enables the Pillar marketing and design teams to quickly create visuals for their materials, without the need to immediately engage with a designer. This is an extremely valuable quality for the visual identity of a crypto-focused brand. In this fast-moving space, news comes quicker than people can read it.
The information coming from the Pillar brand can be presented in the blink of an eye, while keeping its familiarity to the audience.
New logo
Pillar logo got a fresh new look. Along with the contemporary lettering, we also introduced a new there is also a logomark.
The logomark is represented as an isometric counterform of the letter P. The empty square with a pixel in the middle refers to not only the idendity concept, but also serves as a QR-code metaphor, which is the essential thought of Pillar’s business domain. We wanted to keep the logo as simple as possible, so a stylized ‘P’ with a subtle hidden meaning does the trick.
Colors
The new Pillar primary palette is represented by black and light gray as neutral colors. Neon green and muted purple are accent colors.
Neon green is the main brand color. We have researched through dozens of brands in the crypto field. It turns out that most of the projects are in fifty shades of blue, some of them are grey-ish, and only a few use uncommon palettes. That means it’s only a matter of a few minutes, if not seconds, before you get lost when browsing through crypto projects, because of never ending websites, social media and ads that all look the same.
At Pillar, we were looking for a vibrant color palette that would distinguish our brand from the others. The competition for people’s attention is really hard these days. The amount of information every person consumes daily grows in a geometric progression. How to get noticed? How to stand out from the crowd? We have chosen a radical approach. And that’s on purpose. The neon green color can’t be found in nature, it’s genuinely synthetic. It’s digital by definition. Our new main brand color instantly and undoubtedly grabs viewer’s attention.
Typography
Accents and headings typeface has a charming character of pure forms. The use of such a neo-geometric sans serif font is fresh and uncommon in the crypto field making Pillar communication noticeable and moderate at the same time.
Main app and text typeface supports dozens of languages (spoiler alert: multiple language support is coming to Pillar soon). The versatility of this font is key for Pillar adoption when it comes to visual consistency of content being presented across international channels of communications.
One of the missions of Pillar is to educate people on emerging technologies, introduce them to new complex concepts and guide them through widely used tech jargon. To support this, there is a text highlight feature of the visual identity. This simple technique allows us to focus people’s attention on the most important aspects of our messages, paying respect to their time spent reading, whilst remaining sure that they get every detail right.
Motion and video
Along with static components of the brand identity, we’ve developed new guidelines for motion design. A big part of our marketing communications is our YouTube channel full of tutorials, Pillar feature reviews, interviews with guests, company reports, educational materials… you name it. From now on, it also has its style consistent with the brand.
What’s next?
This is just the first part of the story. The actual implementation of the new brand identity is a project in itself. More components of the brand are going to be rolled out gradually in the upcoming weeks. We have many more pixels (or dots as we knew it before) to connect.
New website? Yes. New Pillar app design? Hell, yeah! Get your screen pixels ready.
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