Building a genomic marketplace brand and digital presence from scratch
Introduction
Nebula’s mission is to build the world’s largest, most trusted genomic and health marketplace where everyone can participate. Their blockchain technology eliminates middlemen and connects data buyers directly with data owners, who store and control their data. Through industry-leading partnerships, they are able to offer free or subsidized sequencing of the complete genome.
The Ask
Branding (design logo/style guide) and design a brochure website.
Discovery
We initiated the process by conducting a questionnaire with the team at Nebula to establish a foundational understanding. This ensured alignment and enabled us to efficiently generate successful deliverables for the project.
Some questions asked:
Can you provide a Brand Vision and Mission Statement?
Where did “Nebula” come from—what is the story behind the name?
What is your philosophy around the importance/value of “brand”?
Can you describe the personality of your brand as you see it?
Can you describe how others perceive your brand currently?
Based off of the information we collected, we then created a series of moodboards that conveyed different feelings to better understand which visual direction we should pursue.
It was also important for us to get a deep understanding of competitors in the space as it was key for us to differentiate ourselves as a “disruptor,” but not be isolated and unfamiliar.
To name a few, we looked at:
Doc.ai
• Luna DNA
• Edico Genome
• 23andMe
• DNAnexus
Logo exploration
Build a strong visual identity to use as baseline to build branding.
Quantity first, quality second. I love to begin ideating by sketching on paper. It helps to rapidly generate and explore a lot of different ideas.
Logo Refinement
Lockup Exploration
Tested out different formats of the logo for various intended use cases. Explored how the logo would translate for both portrait and landscape formats as well as logo only vs text only.
Defining a color palette
After landing on a logo which was finalized in black and white, I started to explore various color palettes that could potentially work.
The Final Logo
We landed on a green and blue combination.
Building the website
I worked closely with stakeholders to align on the goals of the website:
Get consumers to sign up for the waitlist for free genomic sequencing and join community on social channels to start engaging consumers on the mission and reason to participate. Be one of the leading blockchain companies that helps people truly understand so they can participate with enthusiasm, and advocate.
Target audience: All, especially investors. Tell a cohesive and compelling story of the mission, its significance to the world, and how Nebula Genomics is best positioned to become the market makers/category leaders of genomic data sharing and analysis.
Impart trustworthiness, transparency, and competency to potential investors, developers, crypto-enthusiasts, and consumers.
Wireframing
Low fidelity to high fidelity
I created an overview of the site architecture. Each page providing context around how content will be presented in each section.
Starting off low fidelity helped to focus on defining the structure of the page and think big picture by not getting lost in details. When working with stakeholders, lo-fi helps to answer questions like: Does this user flow work? Do the proportions of text to image work? Is there enough white space?
Launched fully responsive website
The site went live on August 2018 with an all new look & feel for the brand. We introduced the new logo and seamlessly integrated the color palette throughout the site.
Future Considerations
The website was built with intentions to quickly scale as the next phase from a business perspective was to target consumers for conversion.
Some things we kept in mind to build for the future:
Portal for dApp devs
Product page that includes description and demo
Customer login portal to access data and apps
About us page to include a longer company background and story
Partner portal for researchers and big pharma with a special section for partnerships and data buyers
Press section can scale to house resources and research. As it grows, they can become own pages and archives of information.