First project in the metaverse. Exciting. Everything new, everything different.
No people, only avatars. No offices. Just online meetings. With avatars. For us, mostly at night—because of different time zones. What’s also new: the client itself. Origins has only been around since fall 2021. Are metaverse clients even called “clients”? Something we still need to figure out. Anyway: Origins offers a “data-driven NFT community with cutting-edge tools, automated bots, and access to partnerships with top-flight tool providers.” In short: more data-based strategy than lucky gambling when trading non-fungible tokens. In data we trust. Speaking of gambling: the target group in the Origins space is predominantly male and operates at the intersection of professional gambling and crypto trading
Fun and data-driven money-making are meant to go hand in hand—click by click, mint by mint. For the creative design, this meant: entertainment, tech, and business had to fuse into one brand. As if you're showing up to your stock market job in shorts and flip-flops. The Hochburg process began as usual: research, situational check, what are others doing, what are the styles, colors, typefaces. Origins (reminder: whoever they really are) envisioned a 1980s Blade Runner retro-future look. And above all: it had to be super colorful.
|
• Corporate Identity |
• Motion Design • Wireframing • UI / UX • 3D Renderings |
Clear structures and memorable elements for analytical NFT business.
Just like in real life, we managed to convince the “meta client” of Hochburg’s approach and dialed back the color channels a bit—still meta-clear, though, the blue-purple-pink gradient remains a must. The primary style set is rounded out by a series of icons; the desired ’80s iconography was adapted and immersed in a Stranger Things aesthetic. Atari culture meets NFT drop. The revamped logo with the OG sign, embedded in a globe, can be used in various versions and suggests coolness and analytical knowledge in a diffuse space that’s constantly changing. Always beta, always in progress.
To give Origins some spatial and tactile presence and generate additional dynamic visuals, we created a bubbling, chromatic, fluid, imaginary mass. It can take on various shapes (embryo, body, crypto logo, brain, etc.) and morphs in animation on the Origins website by Hochburg.
Another element: Origins act as a service provider and collaborate with countless NFT projects, which are showcased on platforms like Twitter or Discord. Based on the gambling-collector-sports concept, we developed playing cards for a unified presentation of the individual NFTs. Clearly structured thanks to the restrained brand design, all essential information included, with Origins as the sender—yet still bold, colorful, and catchy for the scene. For a digital flair, holographic foil-like stickers were created that flexibly spread messages using individual letters and emphasize the collectible card character.
A look behind the scenes. Who are Origins? Nobody knows. But now everyone in the Metaverse does: That’s them. Thanks to Hochburg. An excerpt from a Hochburg NFT talk about our first Metaverse project – between Hochburg founders Fabian Schmutzer and Florian Boyd, and FMC founder Caren Finster.
Fabian:
I'm proud of you, Flo! I don’t know if any other German agency has done this before – taking what Hochburg creates for clients in the real world and developing a CI for a company in Web3. Well, “company” in quotation marks – because that kind of classic structure doesn’t really exist in this space at the moment.
Florian:
It’s an NFT alpha/trading group called Origin. They analyze the data behind all those NFT trades across platforms and basically provide input for people who don’t just go, “I’ll buy ten NFTs today and sell them tomorrow – feels like a good move,” but who actually approach it like stock traders – based on data, not gut feeling.
Caren:
Your way of working is completely different now, too…
Florian:
When I have a meeting with the group, it often spans two to four time zones, depending on who’s in the room. They don’t have an office — they don’t have anything, really. It’s a collective of people behind computers, working from their own offices or home offices — or, depending on their age, maybe even still from their childhood bedrooms.
Caren:
A lot of people you meet in Web3 are anonymous. You don’t get a first or last name, no age — just some chat alias and whatever NFT they’re currently rocking as their profile picture, and that’s it. That’s who you’re doing business with. Payment is made in cryptocurrencies, sent to a wallet that’s not linked to any bank — so it’s all very, very far from how we’ve worked at Hochburg up until now. But honestly, I find it insanely exciting and fascinating.
Florian:
I really enjoyed it. This was our first job in the space, and I truly believe it’s going to be a big part of our future. Adidas just recently made a huge investment in the Metaverse, and Nike bought a major company for a lot of money — one that releases various NFTs in the fashion sector. The big players are slowly catching on and realizing this is a growing market.
Fabian:
I think there’s going to be a lot happening in this space in the future. It’s still so young — kind of like Instagram in the early days. If you got in early and really put in the work, you could gain followers quickly and build serious brand strength. Five, six, ten years later, you open a profile and no one really cares anymore — because there are just too many people doing the same thing in the same industry, and the market is saturated.
Florian:
Exactly. If you build up your expertise in this space now, make connections and grow your network, your knowledge will give you a much higher chance of success in the future.
Fabian:
That’s why we’re getting involved — even if, right now, no matter how deep you’re already in, it’s still really hard to imagine what kind of impact all of this might have in the long run.
