Worldbuilding Brand Identities
It’s always the little things
I constantly use “worldbuilding” to talk about brand and identity work. It applies to big things like overarching brand strategy and small details like the icon set my brand design studio Warm designed for Arktos Life Sciences’ website.
Worldbuilding typically refers to novels or films, where authors or directors define a story’s history, geography, cultures, rituals, and rules — everything from “what does our protagonist wake up to?” to “what monetary system exists?” or “how does magic work in this world?” In short: what’s the context? Does the world behave in expected ways? Does it feel cohesive and logical? Or does something break the story?
We built Arktos’ identity around an abstracted DNA double helix, and their monogram logo uses the same geometric visual language. When designing the website, the iconography needed to exist in that same world. There’s nothing rounded, soft, or densely illustrative about the Arktos world. Colorful skeuomorphic icons might be trendy (see Airbnb’s recent navigation changes), but they’d be a grotesque mutation in the story we’re telling. The logo’s geometry informed our pixel art direction for the icons — even down to the solitary LinkedIn icon in the footer.
Every surface, texture, and touchpoint is an opportunity to tell your story and build your world. Every thoughtless or lazy brand application creates dissonance that pulls your audience out of that story.
Warm makes thoughtful brand design for ambitious ideas. We love the curious and obsessive, because we’re curious and obsessive. We keep one eye on the big picture, and the other on the details. If that’s you, too, we should talk.
Book a 15-minute intro chat. → warm.design/chat