Designing a phygital memorabilia collecting experience
Culture Pulse is a revolutionary web3-infused technology and collectibles brand, elevating the fan-celebrity interaction to a new level.
The plot
Culture Pulse is an innovative marketplace platform designed to revolutionize the way celebrities, especially athletes, connect with their fans. The platform provides a unique space for celebrities to sell their exclusive NFT items, such as digitized shirts, sneakers, cards, and more. By leveraging blockchain technology, Culture Pulse ensures the authenticity and uniqueness of each digital item, creating a valuable and engaging experience for fans.
The phygital collectible
Culture Pulse connects with celebrity athletes (and other creators) to “digitize” their game-worn memorabilia and personal relics and sell them in package drops associated with these athlete’s pivotal career moments. Digitizing means every item gets implanted with an NFC chip, tokenizing it forever and keeping record of each transaction from minting and on.
So, when a fan purchases a package, they receive a physical item delivered to their door and instantly get a digital copy of it to their web3 wallet minted on the Polygon blockchain. This digital copy (or NFT if you will) serves as an authentication certificate to prove the item is unique and original.
Design philosophy
The Culture Pulse brand unifies celebrities we call “creators” from all ends of the entertainment industry. So coming up with a distinct style was not easy but important. With the help of the client, we have decided to let the collectibles dictate the surroundings. Since the first drops were mostly sports, we went with a minimalist tech style ensuring a powerful presentation of the items and the athletes.
The challenge
Culture Pulse already had things going design-wise when they introduced us to the project, so brand identity system was in place, positioning was done, creators onboarded, even a website was up and running. What had been missing was a cohesive visual presentation of various memorabilia.
A presentation that would capture the essence of the platform without taking away from the personalities of creators or the uniqueness of the memorabilia. The deliverables would include the website, social media posting guidelines, product imagery, and motion design.We jumped on this opportunity to unify passion and meticulous engineering into a cultural phenomena designed to redefine collecting.
The Process
The Culture Pulse project is not a typical design endeavour where we focus on the brand attributes first and then gradually build towards the entire consistent digital presence across multiple touchpoints. In this case, we utilized a non-linear approach that, nevertheless, brought us to the same result.
Branding and product design
One of the most interesting aspects of the Culture Pulse approach was form in which it would deliver its products.
Visual language refinement
Since the Culture Pulse brand was somewhat established, our goal was to create a visual language that would be capable of reflecting the company that people know but also not limit us in our search for new ways of delivering an exciting experience.
Web experience design
The Culture Pulse website was designed to explain the new approach to delivering digital collectibles in a physical space and vice versa. To achieve that, we have produced multiple explanatory graphics, designed the navigation in a way that would make it marketplace-like but still unique and different.
The futuristic vibe of the website found its reflection in the animation of packages and minting process, all contributing to the brand vision that took a different turn with this redesign.
Design scope
A phygital experience as they call it in Culture Pulse, takes the best of both worlds – the tactile feel of the real product and the limitless potential of an on-screen entity. We could not control the opening of a physical package, but we could turn opening a digital one into a cool experience that would keep people coming back for more.
Inspiration & research
The Culture Pulse project came to us right when the NFT trend began to decrease following the downfall of the hype. Despite that, the NFT technology did leave some valuable features that could be used to augment CX of some digital products. Naturally, we refrained from using NFT as a selling point, and started looking more towards the physical aspects of the products, and their digital value. The second visual inspiration came from sports and art since those are the two main disciplines that the Culture Pulse artefacts come from.
Motion graphics
Sports memorabilia is a central type of content of the website, so presenting it in a fun way was the objective. The challenging part is how different all of these artefacts are, so we came up with a packaging design that unifies all the products into a consistent collection. We then created a 3D scene with all the first collection items lined up and created a concept motion graphic that was later used in the hero section of the home page.
Home
The goal of the home page was to introduce the Culture Pulse innovative approach in a fashion that wouldn’t make it too complicated for the users while still giving them a taste of innovation.
About
More technical content went into the About page outlining the philosophy and passion behind the project. For those interested in how the technology works, there is a graphic visualizing the connection between different elements of the ecosystem.
Creators
Culture Pulse is more than just a marketplace, it’s a platform that fosters social interactions between fans and creators. In that sense, having the ability to display the big names is essential to the platform.
Product
A phygital product implies two products – a physical item and its digital twin. Our packaging design blurs the boundary between the two.
Mobile version
Culture Pulse’s homage to the NFT era can be found in the way the products are released – in form of limited-number drops, which makes them time-sensitive. In that case, the mobile experience becomes extremely important as it gives instant access to purchases.
Design system
The Culture Pulse project is not a typical design endeavour where we focus on the brand attributes first and then gradually build towards the entire consistent digital presence across multiple touchpoints. In this case, we utilized a non-linear approach that, nevertheless, brought us to the same result.
Identity system
One of the most interesting aspects of the Culture Pulse approach was form in which it would deliver its products.
Producer comment
Culture Pulse is a one-of-a-kind project that unifies a technical design aspect, heavy use of brand collateral graphics, and a fun overall subject to work with – rare collectibles from celebrities in sports and all of showbiz.Moses KimCreative Producer
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