A New Era of Storytelling
Story is building open IP infrastructure for the internet era. Led by SY Lee and Jason Zhao, Story is building the World’s IP Blockchain to reimagine storytelling. From pre-launch to their $140M total fundraise led by a16z Crypto, Slope has worked closely with the Story team as their trusted creative partner across all touchpoints - from brand strategy, identity, custom 3D/motion, the Story Foundation website, to supporting creative for Story House, an experiential pop-up at Korea Blockchain Week.
Brand Identity
3D and Motion Design
Website Design
Social Media Collateral
Event Collateral
Pioneering Creativity
To build a comprehensive brand strategy that could appropriately serve their needs over time, we had to first understand the unique vision for the company and protocol. We viewed Story Protocol as a two-stage rocket. In the first stage, their top aim was to become a beacon for high-quality narrative content, groundbreaking distribution, and fan participation in the way of a more traditional studio. In the second stage, the protocol opens to anyone seeking a toolkit and ecosystem to imagine the next interactive narrative franchise, boundless in what they can create.
With these stages in mind, we created a brand strategy that could encompass Story Protocol’s vision across the two stages. As their audiences are those seeking to shape the landscape of storytelling, their new brand positioning makes clear that Story Protocol is empowering them to do so by pioneering creativity at the intersection of exceptional vision and groundbreaking creative execution. Through open infrastructure, Story Protocol enables immersive, community-powered narrative universes.
Immersive Collaboration
At its core, Story Protocol is building open infrastructure that allows creators to collaboratively build narrative universes. We designed a bold and geometric logomark reminiscent of building blocks and inspired by the co-creation possible on the protocol. An expressive type system echoes the logomark's innovative feel. A balanced sans serif and a dynamic serif pair to reflect Story Protocol’s modern take on storytelling as well as historic narratives and printed works.
An extensive library of animated 3D assets inspired by genres of stories and different medium formats bring a sense of immersion and dimension to the visuals. The worlds of fantasy, drama, and poetry inspired soft, amorphous shapes. Futuristic metallic objects link to sci-fi and mystery. And natural textures of stone, marble, sand, and glass represent historical fiction and mythology. The shapes themselves vary, too—some are lively abstractions, while others evoke letterforms. Yet, they come together, just as writers, fans, and developers do on Story Protocol.
Stories Across Mediums
Our brand work for Story Protocol comes together in our website design, showcasing how their strategy and visual system creates an engaging user experience. Animation throughout the site brings the sense of energy and draws the user into Story’s captivating, collaborative worlds. The 3D shapes move, shift, interact, and transform seamlessly between visual icons for prose and comics, podcasts and audio, and film and television. The flexibility of this system illustrates how narrative universes built on Story Protocol can adapt across mediums as they continue to grow.
From the Story Protocol Team
"Slope has been an amazing partner to work with. As a startup in the Web3 space with a complex vision and many user personas to account for, Slope worked closely with us to deeply understand the problems we were solving through brand strategy, which ultimately made a huge difference when working on the visuals for the brand. Jeffrey and team are incredibly professional and all around a joy to work with! Awesome work and communication from the team."
An Expansive Refresh
With Story's shift to become the World’s IP Blockchain - which onramps Programmable IP to power the next generation of AI, DeFi, and consumer applications - we worked with them to craft an update to the initial website design. Honing in on one of the key 3D shapes from our original brand identity work together, we created new web designs from the idea of building and endless creative expansion.
The key 3D shape, representing programmable IP and nicknamed PIP, takes form across an array of materialities. This range of visuals conveys the variety of IP projects possible to build on Story's L1. Across the website pages, PIP helps to represent not only the wide Story IP ecosystem, but also how IP can stack as different collaborators build together, taking on the shape of stacking coins and Lego-like bricks.
