Brand & Product Design · 2018 – 2021

Unlock

An open protocol that lets creators, publishers and developers build access solutions — content paywalls, memberships, ticket sales — on top of the Ethereum blockchain.

I worked with Unlock to reimagine their brand, communication and online presence, from the identity and its illustration system through the collateral, decks and website.

I also designed the blockchain-based web app and the products built on top of their open-source protocol — the dashboard where a creator sets up a lock, prices it, and manages the keys that grant access.

Brand

The Unlock “U” drawn as a network of connected nodes — The mark drawn as a network — a lock made of the people it connects.

Collateral & Communication

A protocol is an abstract thing to sell. Most of the work was making it concrete for two very different audiences — creators who want to get paid, and developers who have to implement it.

Unlock business cards, patterns, hand-drawn illustrations and icons — Stationery, patterns, illustration and icon system.

Slides from the Unlock deck explaining the membership and passion economy — Deck material laying out the case — what breaks in the attention economy, and what changes for creators and consumers.

App

The dashboard is where the protocol stops being an abstraction: a creator makes a lock, prices it, and gets the snippet that puts it on their site.

The Unlock dashboard listing a creator’s locks with key duration, quantity, price and balance — Locks — duration, keys sold, price and balance per lock, with the wallet it all hangs off named at the top.

The Unlock dashboard with the Integrate panel open, showing platform plugins and a custom integration option — Integrate — the panel opens in the row of the lock it belongs to, so the plugin list is never a separate trip.

Landing Page

The full unlock-protocol.com developer page — how locks and keys work, start building paths, integrations, the grant program, community and news — unlock-protocol.com — locks and keys explained in one dark panel, then three routes in by how much you want to build, then the plugins, grants and community around it.