Holographik steers Sui’s brand clear of the “DeFi casino” aesthetic — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

Sui is a Layer 1 blockchain, the base infrastructure that other crypto products are built on top of, designed to let assets, data and permissions be owned, programmed and verified directly. As the platform and its surrounding ecosystem scaled, the Sui Foundation, the independent organisation that stewards it, turned to digital-first design studio Holographik to evolve the main Sui brand, expanding the identity and design system across products, events, websites and motion. The work aimed to refine rather than completely replace, organising everything around this core idea: ‘Sui is the signal, not the noise.’

That principle came out of a frustration with how the category usually communicates. Layer 1 brands have converged on a narrow set of cues – namely dark interfaces, neon gradients, abstract geometry and dense technical language, which is impressive at a glance but keeps audiences at arm’s length. Holographik wanted to steer clear of what it calls the “DeFi casino” aesthetic. “A lot of crypto brands lean into hyper-volatility, which naturally reinforces ideas of speculation,” explains Art Director Philipp Thelen. “For Sui, we wanted to position the brand as a trustworthy long-term infrastructure layer that could speak not only to crypto natives, but also institutions, developers and a much broader audience. The visual language needed to say ‘reliable stack’ and ‘data integrity’ rather than ‘hype.’”

The brief began as a refinement and one of the original requirements was to preserve the equity already sitting in the existing logo – a droplet symbol paired with the Sui wordmark. Holographik explored a range of new directions before deciding the strongest move was to keep the symbol and distil it. They adjusted the proportions, reduced some of the elongation and refined the geometry so the droplet feels more balanced and contemporary in digital environments. “The intention was to make the mark feel less decorative and more iconic,” Thelen tells us, so it can sit comfortably inside highly structured interfaces.

Where many blockchain brands try to own five or six colours at once, Sui’s palette is reduced to the essentials: blue as the core identifier, supported by black, white and a blue-toned greyscale. Blue already had equity within the ecosystem, so the studio refined what was there to be more precise and ownable. The result, Blue/500, is an electric shade that sits against a near-black Blue/900. “The former feels energetic and future-facing without becoming overly synthetic or aggressive,” Thelen explains. “The darker base creates depth and focus, allowing the brighter blue to be the hero and act as the signal throughout the system.”

TWK Everett by Weltkern is the single typeface throughout the system, with Thelen describing its appeal as a balance between clarity and character. It sits within the Helvetica lineage, structured and legible enough for developer documentation, dashboards and product interfaces, but its sharp cuts and stroke endings give it enough personality to create characterful moments in marketing and motion. From its typographic cues, the studio translated Everett’s proportions, angles and stroke details into an icon library. “The icons don’t sit on top of the brand language; they feel native to it,” Thelen reveals.

Two distinct gradients, one linear and one radial, are each built from three stacked layers: the gradient itself, a grain layer set to Soft Light and a blue overlay set to Colour. With teams across the ecosystem producing content at volume, the rules exist to stop gradients drifting off-brand. “A perfectly smooth gradient can often feel generic or overly synthetic,” Thelen notes. “The grain gives it a bit more atmosphere and tactility.” Used functionally, the gradients express movement, liquidity and depth across the system.

Holding all of this together as Sui expands has been the harder, ongoing task, and for Jordan Francis, Head of Design & Creative, it has meant treating the work as something constantly being built rather than delivered once. “As the ecosystem scaled, Holographik became a genuine long-term creative partner. Less a delivery, more a living system built together,” he tells us. “You see the visual language being adopted and remixed across the ecosystem without being mandated,” Francis reflects. “That’s the real signal.”