The ‘Brand New’ LocalCoinSwap

We promised you there were changes coming - and now you can see them for yourselves.

Whilst under the hood the development team are still hard at work on coding the exchange itself, the major update to share with you is the corporate rebranding. From today you will see our new logo and associated styling rolling out across the site, and all our social media and other properties elsewhere.

Like all great user experiences, a tremendous amount of thought and effort has gone in to the new corporate branding, to ensure that for everyday users there is very little that you will have think about or be aware of. As a user of LocalCoinSwap we want you to spend time on our platform in a way which is enjoyable and fun, as well as feeling part of a community - so creating a consistent and identifiable brand has been an important investment.

Whilst the LocalCoinSwap team were heavily involved in the branding exercise, we also brought in the specialist professional services of Untold Design, to ensure a fresh perspective on our vision, and complete consistency across everywhere you will interact with the brand - from the website and exchange through to print and promotional items.

The branding has been designed to reflect our 4 core values:
Inclusivity Simplicity Openness Security

It took a long time to get right, and it started with the logo itself.

A logo has to work on so many levels, and becomes the most fundamental and iconic visual identifier for any brand. It must be effective at every scale from a roadside billboard ad to a tiny profile picture, and be instantly identifiable - think about the logos of the brands you know and love, especially if you’ve never really thought about them before: from a few pixels to a bold banner, it has to tell you such a lot about the brand it represents at a very visceral and immediate level. It also has to be immediately recognisable both with and without the brand name itself.

Clean lines and an accessible, welcoming appearance was important to this. We know that LocalCoinSwap will be the on-ramp for many first time users of cryptocurrency in the future - so creating a design which was clear and friendly, requiring no prior knowledge or expectation, was key.
The way the two elements mirror each other signifies peer to peer exchange at a basic level, passing of value back and forth in parallel, and interlocking smoothly together like every good trade. The colours of the logo represent the diversity of trading possible on the platform - using blue and yellow, a pair of hues which are both complementary yet visually contrasting, creates a strong image which will work on any scale, and stands out vividly against dark or light backgrounds.

But it has also been designed to be effective in monochrome too - you’ll see our logo in shades of grey as an icon and thumbnail in appropriate spaces, and hope you like the subtle 3D feel to it as well. Flat icon design is so iOS8! We wanted you to feel the curves of the directional elements, and the use of gradients helps bring them to life more tangibly - as well as creating a visual ‘funnel’ in each direction, for all of your cryptocurrency deals to flow through freely to their destination.

The fuss-free fonts and the colour palate chosen reflects freshness and clarity. Blue is associated with business and financial branding, as well as sharpness and left-brained thinking. Yellow contrastingly brings warmth and reflects the community and social values which are a big part of LocalCoinSwap. Together, the yin and the yang, a perfect harmony - which also look great together everywhere (watch out for new merchandise and other exciting uses coming soon!)

We hope you enjoyed learning a little more about the ideas and thinking behind our new appearance, because it’s very important to us to take our community along on our exciting journey into the future.

We know you can’t wait to get your hands on the trading tools themselves, but if you’ve been part of the LCS tribe for a while then it’s easy to overlook how important the look and feel will be to brand new users. We want to give you an exchange which not only serves all the functional purposes you want for your own buying and selling, but one which you’ll be proud to share and introduce your friends to, invite new users onto the platform to join in the marketplace, and be part of the revolution.

Very soon, we will see you on the inside!