BitcoinZ brand guidelines

Why it is VERY important to have them

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vK1NU_TqFuP-GHT_ICY-GsCmWmvRVFKa9cWg1OGF8Ds/

Consistency = trust in new users
Consistant and thought through design is easier to use
Consistant messaging is easier to parse mentally

The problem I’ve noticed is that there are no rules on how to use the logo.
There is a logo but some people put it on one type of background, others on another type and crop it. Others make it pixellated or rotated.

Those actions DILUTE the brand.

Understanding the community driven part, I believe there should be strict rules on how to use the logo unless the goal is to look unprofessional and childish to everyone from the outside world just to keep the community vibe.

Rules don’t “destroy” creativity, they just keep it focused and consistent i.e. logo can only be used on specific brightnesses (only on dark photos for example) and in certain size and spacing from the edge of the image.

We’re talking here about all promo materials like twitter posts / instagram posts (which should be reclaimed as right now it looks like a scam).

LISK
Good inspiration is how Lisk got rebranded (aside of not delivering on their tech related promises) - their new brand / website / marketing is all consistent and makes up for everything else they’re lacking. I’m not saying new LISK is perfect and that everyone should like it. It’s not and people have different tastes. But we can’t deny the entire message around the brand is now consistent.

THIS SHOULD ALSO HAPPEN WITH BTCZ if we want it to succeed. Design an make or break a product.

My proposal - keeping the current logo but building a brandbook around it. Every marketing material / exchange entry graphics / twitter post etc should follow those rules. An example of a couple of brandbooks I did can be found under these links (one is in polish but I think it’s mostly self explanatory)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/osznzyheuac8mob/CSwifter_brandbook.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dcn93kqk8qvblvz/kf_by_hype4.jpg

The idea is to create something like this for BTCZ and keep using it / enforcing the use of it.

Another idea would be to push the desktop wallet further (aside from fixing it) to make it look a bit more compelling. Wallets that look good also help with trust (I see it with other crypto’s I invest in myself, in most cases those with subpar wallets end up not delivering other things as well). Here are some screenshots of the wallet, but are there any devs that could (with my help and assets cut out) re-code the current swing wallet towards this direction?

Of course for now we can skip STATs , charts and graphs and all that and only “restyle” the current functionalities. The design could be updated if we go with a branding exercise and decide we want lighter colours for example instead of dark grey backgrounds.



  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

I thought this vote was about actually proposing what the BitcoinZ brand guidelines would be, instead it is a bunch of examples of what it could be. I am disappointed that the guidelines were not proposed in this vote. I will with hold my ‘yes’ vote until someone actually proposes a usable guidelines.

As far as I know, it’s just an advance, the proposal is being prepared and it will take a few days, but we wanted to know opinions and if it really seemed interesting to most.

@KOMETE4 can you move this to another topic for now and create a new thread in proposals when we’re ready for an actual vote?

Also, I would suggest putting the poll at the bottom of the message to help people from voting after reading the subject and not the content. :slight_smile:

I agree. I’ve seen some content created for this coin and I can understand the enthusiasm but there needs to be governance over the content creation.

Exactly why I’ve removed myself from doing any further marketing or inputting to the community. I’m officially just a miner and hodler now.

I submitted a couple proposals in an attempt to standardize or at least create some consistency, But I guess they did not meet approval.

Ok guys, so here’s the PDF link.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bzfmqqwfwls76ok/btcz.pdf?dl=0

I went with the free Lato font for the wordmarks and tried to standardise the way logo is used on marketing materials. Inside the PDF you can read some of the guidelines and a couple of examples on how they can be used. The wallet app would be a next step approach (even just rebranding the current wallet with new graphics and no new features)

Let me know what you guys think,

Best,

Mike

2 Likes

Dude, this is awesome! Excellent work, keep it up!

2 Likes

This looks great.

The “BitcoinZ + zkZksnarks” phrase is what caused friction for me in marketing to my clients that were professionals. It was always met with a “doesn’t that equal BitcoinZZ?”. So i stopped marketing. Nobody can logically explain that phrase, and nobody seems interested in changing it.

As well the constant “to the moon” type motif of images creates too much of a scammy feel for me.
In my humble opinion the focus of btcz marketing should be more on what’'s real. The true features of supply, security, speed, community rather then speculation and promises of lambos and moons.

That guideline is a great direction. If i see more maturity and focus like that i’d be happy to spin up my efforts again.

4 Likes

I’m all in with this. Whether voted in or not I’m going to stick with this format in future stuff I do. Will rebrand earlier stuff I did also.

I agree. Maybe we should drop the +zkSnarks bit. Our main goal is community and joint effort that entails, so the slogan In decentralization we trust makes sense! I don’t know if we need to explain the Z part of our name, but we could right a story about our history and clear it up there for anyone who wants to know more.

Then drop it! I agree with this too.

This sounds good. ZKsnarks is an unusual term, and even digging into what it offers regarding privacy and its application is deep. To throw that term out to you the masses can be a head scratcher.

Or maybe even better and more logical. Bitcoin + zkSNARKs = Btcz

Thanks again for the pro recommendations Mike. Visited your site - nice branding. One thing I caught in your samples is the word ‘decentralisation’ should be spelled ‘decentralization’. The ‘z’

Thanks for the feedback guys. I must’ve automatically written the s instead of z, but that’s not the final guide yet - it’s something that probably needs to be voted in by the core team, as right now it’s just a couple of us sharing ideas and still a lot of people doing very random stuff (often with completely unreadable fonts).

But even that - we should simply say that all -official- communications should use a branding guidelines set, while all non-official (fan made stuff) CAN use it + it’s encouraged but if they want to be “creative” that’s their right.

I can look into creating PSD files for the community to use (kind of like “drop your image here” and change the text)

I’m also pro dropping that zksnarks part as it’s confusing to most real people. It can be communicated as a bullet point where necessary.

The final branding would be like the ones that are linked in the first post (the dropbox links). For now it’s mostly to share the most top-level ideas like the font / backgrounds opacity / safe space etc.

If somebody rally care why the Z in the name they will ask. But I guess “BitcoinZ” is more than enough as the coin presentation.

I don´t like also promisses of the moon.

We must try to reach out the outsiders and I think that the moment to do that is while all the coins are down!!!

We could drop it and then run a campaign about what does “Z” mean to you?

To be honest, I think of World War Z, or the Zombie apocalypse when I hear BitcoinZ. It would be fun to write a story along those lines. “From the ashes of the Great Bitcoin / Bitcoin Cash wars rises a new challenger to the cryptocurrency space. Evolved from the mistakes from the past, BitcoinZ is ready to take on the new world. Yadda yadda yaddda”.

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I liked the idea to run a campaign about the letter Z, however zkSnarks should be present in the story, just not to forget its origin!!!

Ok, had some crazy work sprints but slowly coming back to life.
The awesome thing is that I’ve already seen some of the usecases (like the post about txtZ) that are following the rules. That also gives me some ideas on what can be improved if we use black text instead of white so I will try and update the document in the next few days.

@renuzit - Manu told me that you’re the person to talk to if we wanted to update the wallet design. I can help with the entire design part (creating every screen and cutting out all the assets) so whenever any of the developers are ready we can try to bump up the wallet quality (not even features, just the actual look and feel). I think that clear branding + a better designed / more beautiful wallet will help a lot to make us more popular :slight_smile:

1 Like