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STARKNET

FOUNDATION

STARKNET

FOUNDATION

STARKNET

FOUNDATION

Client

Starknet Foundation

Type

Brand System Design

Year

2024|2025

Role

Brand Designer @ Starknet Foundation

As part of the design team, I designed the brand system and visual language that would scale across communications, developer resources, and educational programs.

Challenges

🌊 Standing out in a sea of sameness
Most Web3 brands look identical: purple gradients and techy clichés. The Foundation needed a visual identity that honored the Starknet ecosystem while feeling contemporary, elegant, and accessible.

🎯 Serving everyone without losing focus
The Foundation speaks to developers, institutions, and everyday users. The brand had to flex across technical docs, governance proposals, and community content while staying cohesive.

🔄 Honoring the past while moving forward
The Foundation needed its own identity, but it couldn't abandon Starknet. The challenge was evolution, not revolution: building on existing brand equity without copying what came before.

Concepts

🧩 Ideas are modular, evolving, and interconnected
I built the system around "Totems", stacked shapes that represent how ideas compound, evolve, and build on each other. This concept became the foundation for every visual decision.

📊 Three visual styles for three stages of thought
We developed a tiered graphic system that mirrors the journey from concept to execution:

Solid = raw ideas (clean, minimal, playful)

Linear = structure (technical, precise, intentional)

Volumetric = realization (expressive, dimensional, fully formed)

This gave the brand flexibility to adapt to any context while staying unmistakably Starknet Foundation.

🎨 Break the Web3 aesthetic rules
We chose a contemporary serif with a sans serif next to a desaturated palette spanning the full color wheel. The result: a brand that feels timeless, premium, and memorable.

Solution

🔷 A brand system built on shapes and totems
Fluid, abstract shapes became the visual foundation. They can exist alone or stack into totems: modular compositions that feel irregular, layered, and intentionally imbalanced. These shapes are the connective tissue across all applications, from technical diagrams to merchandise.

⚡ Three distinct styles
The Solid, Linear, and Volumetric styles gave the Foundation a flexible visual vocabulary. Each style serves a specific purpose:

Solid for community and accessibility

Linear for technical and developer contexts

Volumetric for hero moments and storytelling

📦 A complete system ready to scale

Logo system with clear hierarchy
Typography pairing (Inter Variable + PP Pangaia serif)
Full-spectrum desaturated color palette
Modular shape system with infinite applications
NFT Collection (Starkies) for community engagement
Guidelines for charts, diagrams, photo frames, and motion

NFT Collectible

🎭 Starkies
I designed Starkies, a collection of modular character illustrations that function as the Foundation's most playful and approachable brand expression. Built entirely from the Solid style shapes, each Starkie is constructed from 2-4 stacked shapes with minimal eyes for personality.

These characters work as NFTs, profile pictures, community badges, and merchandise graphics, humanizing the Foundation's presence across digital and physical spaces while staying true to the brand's modular system.

Team

Julian Alterini – Lead
Jaime Fernandez – Brand Design
Isabelle Junge – Brand Design
Laura Piccolo – Web Design
Pete Duffield – Web Design
Tomas Cech – Developer

💛 Gracias