THE BRIEF
ChainMart is an online platform focused on blockchain education and the adoption of Web3 technologies. It serves as both an educational resource and a vendor marketplace, helping businesses discover, understand, and implement blockchain-based products and services.
The brief was to develop a scalable visual system that could be applied consistently across multiple touchpoints while appealing to a professional business audience. The goal was to move away from the visual clichés often associated with the blockchain space; dark interfaces, highly technical aesthetics, and alternative, futuristic branding and instead create a clean, credible, and approachable identity.
While ChainMart already had an established logo and colour palette when I joined the project, the broader visual language lacked distinction and consistency. My role was to create a more cohesive and recognisable design system that would strengthen the brand's presence, improve usability, and provide a clear visual identity across all communications.
STEP 1: IMPROVE THE IMAGERY
The first challenge was the brand's imagery. The team wanted to move away from generic stock photos and create something more distinctive, memorable, and uniquely their own. Below are examples of the imagery they wanted to replace on the website.
THE NEW IMAGES
To replace the generic stock imagery, I developed a photography direction that felt more intentional and aligned with ChainMart's positioning. Rather than focusing on people or overly conceptual technology visuals, I centred the imagery around environments, infrastructure, and real-world systems where commerce and technology intersect.
I integrated photography into the visual system using geometric framing and graphic masks, allowing images to feel like a cohesive part of the brand rather than standalone assets. The result was a more distinctive and professional visual language that added context and credibility while supporting the brand's core design elements of geometry, typography, and colour.
STEP 2: VISUAL SYSTEM
Chainmart then needed article headers that would live on their platform. The goal was to create a scalable colour-coded system that readers could identify information through. They wanted ChainMart written articles to stand out against articles written by other creators on the app.
Using the geometric system and observational photography established in the first task I created a visual system that was able to grow with their software.
STEP 3: ROLL OUT
To demonstrate the flexibility of the visual system, I applied the photography treatment across a series of social media assets, creating a cohesive and recognisable presence that balanced professionalism with visual impact while reinforcing ChainMart's role in making blockchain technology more accessible to businesses.
