We’ve given Scroll a fresh look, a brand new website, developer portal, and more – I am super proud of the work our team, and others, have done. Back last year when I joined, it was clear to all of us that Scroll was due for a major refresh. There has never been a shortage of excitement about what Scroll was building, but the community let us know –frequently– that they wanted to see us up our game, and create a more modern identity.

The Process:

Our new identity wasn’t built overnight; it was a months-long process of discovery and iteration. I worked with a wide range of stakeholders, along with feedback from our community, to uncover the essence of Scroll’s identity and capture the values that make us unique.

Through interviews, workshops, and feedback sessions, we considered every possible angle, colour, concept, and interpretation of Scroll. What emerged was a unique identity that feels both inspiring and recognisable.

It was not long after I joined that I kickstarted the project to give Scroll a makeover, with Human After All (HAA), leading the discovery process, design thinking workshops, moodboard sessions, and more. With HAA we refined and finalized Scroll’s tone of voice and overarching approach to the refinement of Scroll’s new brand identity.

Working closely with our designer/brand architect, YTT, we put together a robust and comprehensive set of guidelines to support the unification of Scroll’s outward-facing image. These aim to ensure that representations of the Scroll brand are aligned and consistent. Our guidelines take a deep dive into Scroll’s story, core values, vision, and positioning of the brand.

To get a sense of what the brand guidelines contain, I’ll walk you through some of its major facets:

Tone of voice & personality. In reimagining Scroll, in collaboration with HAA, I wanted to make sure Scroll’s personality and voice reflect our ethos. We don’t believe hype is the best way to build trust, but through transparent, open communication informed by the needs of our community. We want to be informative without sounding too academic, and friendly without sounding too casual. One of the fun things discovered during the process was which celebrities we thought most resonate with Scroll’s personality. We concluded Scroll is 80% Carl Sagan and 20% David Attenborough: curiosity, sincerity, and inspiration fused with a sense of adventure, diligence, straightforwardness, and openness.

Logo. With our logo we started over from scratch, trying some more or less abstract possibilities, but after many iterations from our in-house designers YTT and Vivian, it became clear that a physical scroll is central to our visual identity. To us, a scroll symbolises creativity, imagination, and ever-unfurling narratives. It is also in harmony with Scroll’s long standing effort to be open and community-focused, while doing everything we can to preserve Ethereum's core principles.

We twisted it, turned it, made it abstract, and this is what we landed on…

Colour and Typography. If you take even just a quick glance, you’ll notice Scroll's personality really comes to life in the colour palette and typography our designers chose. The native colour beige was a core element of Scroll’s identity from day one and we felt that this colour embodies Scroll’s authenticity and the narrative that makes us distinct among other projects in web3. The complementary colours chosen are cyan, black, and warm red, which represent openness, diligence, and adventurousness. The typography we landed on mirrors Scroll’s identity, which is characterised by a harmonious fusion of simplicity and playfulness.

Illustrations. We wanted to be sure that Scroll’s visual elements reinforce our belief that play is central to innovation. Finding an illustrator that understood our needs was no easy feat! Thanks to the collaboration of Jonathan and Vivian, the slightly retro-futuristic illustrations invite users to explore a future where everyone is free to build novel applications freely, just as they would on Scroll. The colours are rooted in tones of ancient sandstone with vibrant pops of new life and growth.

Application of the new elements

Thanks to the hard work of Kate, our product manager, Dan, our devrel lead, and Vivian, our designer, our team was able to make considerable upgrades to Scroll’s UX and UI. The developer portal was shifted from a simple wiki page to a more robust and interactive experience that features a “developer quickstart.” You’ll also notice that Scroll’s documentation has been arranged intuitively so you’re never stuck digging for the information you need.

Our designer Vivian gave the website more than just a visual makeover. Moving away from a highly minimalist approach, she built a much more comprehensive home for Scroll, making it easier to learn about the community, including ecosystem projects and more detailed information about our team.

Upping Scroll’s swag game

As someone who has more swag at home than I am willing to admit, it was a lot of fun to work on the application of our new identity on merch. We all wanted to see swag that our community would be excited about and actually use once back home. Come and find us at the next event and you might get some fun swag. Here’s a peak at what we are cooking up:

Behind the Scenes

The Scroll makeover was made possible by a collective of dedicated Scrollers. I’d like to give a special shout out to our designers YTT and Vivian, product manager Kate, dedicated development team, and developer relations lead Dan, who all worked tirelessly on this project. I would also like to express our appreciation for each member of the Scroll team, including Matt for all his copy work (including helping me with this post), Mei for all the support throughout the process, and of course our founders Ye, Sandy, and Haichen. Also a huge shout-out to everyone who lent their expertise and support, especially during the discovery phase. Special thanks to the team at Human After All, Jonathan from Peregrine, and Alex from Wicked Good Media – whose expertise played a pivotal role in bringing our vision to life.

You can access the full guidelines here. We always welcome feedback - you can reach out to us via hi@scroll.io or stay tuned for an invite to join our next community call for a Q&A with the team. Keep an eye on our community channels for more updates!