Every now and again as a designer you get to work on the formation of a brand and / or service from scratch. That can be a surprisingly unusual challenge, as more often than not, ‘something’ already exists. And designers often only get to touch and influence brands at a visual or a comms level - usually as part of a brand’s ongoing evolution. That way, designers get the gift of  being able to learn from the successes and failures made by  another design team, and springboard from creative paths taken before.

However, when there’s next to nothing to start from. Not even a name nor an encapsulation of the service. Just a basic idea, the vision and raw ambition of the founders to work with, then there really is no brand, design and visual-system challenge quite like it.

Hyphe was born at a unique moment in time when the proliferation of trading in digital currencies like Bitcoin (amongst others), clashed with the first of many lockdowns (as a result of the global pandemic). This of course brought sweeping changes to our on and offline behaviours, and accelerated the evolution of our attitudes to crypto-currencies and emerging trading verification technology such as blockchain. Here, our idea was simple - Hyphe was the connection between the new and the old. As such, we made a conscious decision to avoid the visual clichés used by either traditional financial instutions, or their more revoultionary (but equally clichéd) digital currency counterparts.

At a base level, as a liquidity provider serving traditional financial insitutions with a desire to expand their offering to trading digital assets and currencies, Hyphe’s ultimate ambition remains a simple one: Increase access to the financial markets offered by digital asset trading. Hyphe was originally licensed to trade in the Netherlands, but has since achieved a huge milestone with the license to now also trade, and offer liquidity services, in Germany.

The working relationship has continued since. Through multiple website iterations, photography shoots, the development of countless icons, animation behaviours, product demos, events and live talks hosted by the founders. Here all design is iterative, and as a collaborative team we look forward to all the future next steps.

Typefaces
Ambit by CoType Foundry (offering a unique, contemporary, feeling of a sans-serif with some of the flair and qualities of a serif. Paired with
Basis by Colophon for rudimentary simplicity and neutrality

Role
Design & Design Direction 

Collaboration with
The team and founders at Hyphe — notably Jack Allen, Head of Marketing & Comms 

Writing by
Jack Allen, Moritz Conzen & Martin Jackson

Website UX
Lawrence Weyman-Jones

Special thanks to
Dolf Diederichsen, Chris Demetrius & Jack Allen