Wildish & Co. opt for public domain collage avatars in their identity for DAO onboarder Metaphor

HQ’d in Miami, Metaphor makes it easy to discover, join and participate in a decentralised autonomous organisation, or a DAO – which is a grassroots group that coordinates through a shared set of rules enforced on a blockchain. Essentially, DAOs are open-source, unlike the traditional top-down structure of most companies. 

Metaphor has collaborated across the pond, working alongside London-based design studio Wildish & Co. to craft their identity – looking to stand out from the crowd and visually surprise the emoji-filled fintech space. This mission was led by Wildish & Co.’s ‘Embrace New’ strategy, having refined the brand’s strategy and architecture under this notion, with the idea of connection and Web3’s burgeoning community powering the visual motifs throughout the brand. A theme most overtly embodied through the collages of images from the public domain that make up Metaphor’s user’s avatars. 

“We created them in Illustrator and designed a structure so that the avatars were generative,” Managing Director Sam Fresco tells us, with hundreds of assets and the intention to continually add to the photographic stockpile. “It’s worth mentioning that a core element in designing the brand was that we were building a platform for a community,” he adds, “so the concept was that in this strange new world, you were never alone,” setting the rule that avatars are always constructed with pairs of two or more characters.

Supporting the colours rife within the public domain imagery is a set of prominent, bright hues, including white, blue, red and pink tones. “We wanted to create a palette that was the polar opposite of everything in the blockchain/crypto space,” Fresco explains, avoiding any overtly digital gradients or moody palettes. “The pink especially was designed to go against the grain for everything you expect from a tech platform,” he notes, “bringing in bright accents to lift the brand,” in doing so providing warmth and friendliness – a tone complemented by their pragmatic type choices. 

“Right Grotesk is only used for headlines,” Fresco details, discussing Pangram Pangram’s sans serif’s role as the hero typeface, alongside Rasmus Andersson’s Inter as the supporting type. “We use this across all main communication for digital and print media,” he adds, befitting the typography with iconography, as seen within Metaphor’s logo. “The brand mark was designed to represent two things; a doorway and stairs,” Fresco remarks, citing Metaphot’s dual purpose as an educator of Web3 and a gateway for participation. “Therefore we wanted a mark to show these two sides,” he concludes, “the stairs show the educational journey and the doorway to represent the entry into the world of DAOs.”

Wildish & Co.