Designing a brand and product identity for a DeFi strategy platform before the category had a visual language.
MC² Finance was building a decentralised strategy marketplace; a platform where DeFi traders could publish investment strategies, back them with tokens, and let others follow them with real capital. A technically sophisticated before the boom of cryptocurrency.
- → Brand Identity Design
- → Product UI Design
- → Iconography
- → Design System
A vertical digital display for MC2 Finance highlighting three key features: "Crosschain Pools," "DeFi Integrations," and "Audit and Token-Gating," with call-to-action buttons for "Contact Us" and "Learn More."
Our Approach
DeFi products in 2023 sat in one of two visual camps: either sterile fintech with gradients and shield icons, or crypto-native dark mode with neon accents and aggressive typography. Neither camp had solved the actual design problem, which is that decentralised finance is genuinely complex
The design challenge was making all of that legible and trustworthy to an audience split between experienced DeFi traders who distrust anything that looks too polished, and institutional observers who distrust anything that looks too chaotic. We built the brand identity, logo system, and full product UI from scratch; including a custom icon set for every functional layer of the platform.
The MC² Fi logo came from the intersection of two ideas: the architectural solidity that institutional finance demands, and the modular, stackable nature of the product itself. The M mark is built from geometric blocks — deliberately structural, deliberately scalable. The teal brand colour was chosen to sit between the cold authority of traditional finance and the energy of the DeFi ecosystem. Neither world felt fully claimed by it, which was the point.
How we executed this project
The product UI was the harder problem. A strategy card needed to communicate risk score, consistency rating, reputation score, APY, chain, and backer count; all at a glance, without overwhelming a first-time user or boring an experienced one. We designed a scoring system UI that used circular progress indicators with intentional restraint: enough visual motion to indicate dynamism, not so much that it resembled a gaming interface. The data hierarchy was structured so experienced DeFi users could read it in two seconds and new users could understand it in twenty.
The custom icon system addressed the platform's technical layers; crosschain pool depth, DeFi integrations, audit states, token-gating status. Stock icons don't exist for these concepts because the concepts themselves are new. We designed a modular icon family where each variant communicates the same underlying idea at different states of depth or access, creating a visual grammar that scales as the product adds features.
The result was a brand and product identity that could sit in front of UBS, Franklin Templeton, and Julius Bär; which is exactly where MC² Finance eventually took it.
Let’s create something meaningful together. Contact us, and let’s build a brand that’s thoughtful, effective, and beautifully designed.
