Greetings everyone,
We are excited to continue with updates on the Brand Refresh and we continue to invite your feedback.
This evolution of the NEAR Brand is crucial in helping people understand the power of the new world that NEAR enables. Since I joined back in 2018, I have been able to see, first hand, how committed the NEAR community has been to building a world where people have control over their money, data, and power of governance. We affectionately call this, the Open Web.
Early on, it was developers who saw the vision for how NEAR could enable this new world. Today, the NEAR community is made up of people from all over the world with many different interests and skillsets. The NEAR Brand must engage all types people in our Ecosystem (and beyond).
This new world is emerging before our eyes. It is vast, and full of opportunity. However, due to the breadth of it, it can be difficult to communicate to people.
“What is NEAR?” they ask.
hmmm… well… it’s… a… a whole lot of things…
It’s a blockchain, a cryptocurrency, a development platform, a movement, a community… and so much more. It is, in many ways, a new world.
Many in our community have dubbed this world ‘the NEARverse.’
As we sought to communicate the vastness of the NEARverse and how all the pieces fit together, we thought a visualization could be helpful. So, for the past few months, we’ve been working with some brilliant CGI artists and designers to achieve this.
With NEAR as the infrastructure, developers, founders, creators, and community members can build beautiful new experiences–new ways to live, work, play, and connect.
NEAR is an open, living, breathing ecosystem that anyone can plug into and birth something beautiful.
So, today I wanted to share some of the progress on visualizing the NEARverse…
Now, I must warn you. This is quite a bit different than our current visual brand direction, so if you’re change-averse, please let it marinate before you respond
The NEARverse does not exist in outer space. It is grounded. It is familiar, yet other-worldly.
NEAR is the infrastructure–the foundation for innovation.
It is living and active. Things are being built before your very eyes.
Each element is connected, and contribute to each other creating a harmonic ecosystem.
The environment will appear differently depending on which path you take on the website (developer, founder/creator, community). For example, founders/creators may see things as merely a vision of what could be. Like this…
Here’s the NEARverse in context of the new website which is still a work in progress. With the redesign, we are working to reflect the quality of the tech in the NEAR ecosystem. It keeps the original vision of NEAR which is a neutral base color palette (White/black) with the use of color to reflect the amazing experiences built on top of NEAR. However, we’re moving away from the primary color palette to a more sophisticated and diverse palette.
Hopefully I’ve provided enough context for you to see that we are taking a very intentional approach to the re-brand of NEAR.
So, I encourage you to take some time and sit with this a bit. Think about the future of NEAR, and be sure to check the open brand page to review strategy and find tips on how to provide actionable feedback.
We’re excited to hear your feedback!
More soon