Overview
BCG Digital Ventures approached Saffron to help articulate the blockchain for the art world they were developing in collaboration with Art Basel and Luma Foundation.
The challenge
Arcual is the first blockchain ecosystem to be purpose-built to address the unique needs of the art world – including artists, galleries, institutions, and collectors. Arcual’s blockchain applications will create a trusted space for information, partnerships, and transactions within the art world.
Naming a brand on the rise
We created the Arcual name to embody a sense of ascension, an upward movement or a meteoric rise. It represents a journey – the brand’s journey with the artists and galleries, as well as the journey of the artwork itself. Further to this, the name has a strong connection to art, curation and equality – a beautiful summation of Arcual’s founding mission and purpose.
Talking the walk
Our verbal identity for Arcual was rooted in the idea of the ‘Guiding Pioneer’. The voice we created for the brand brings together a sense of forward-looking purposefulness and magnetic simplicity. When Arcual speaks, people listen and come on the journey with the brand.
Visualising the journey
The story of the journey was a continued golden thread throughout the project, actively inspiring our strategy and creative teams. The inspiration for the visual identity was creating a motif that Arcual could own around the artwork’s journey being captured in the blockchain.
Each event within that journey was imagined as a unique interaction between a set of geometric shapes, with each one representing a different key player in the art world. The result is a highly modular, bold and recognisable brand aesthetic, with a logo and visual identity that captures the chain of these interactions and events, just like the product.
Distilling it in a brand video
To make the brand even more tangible for potential audiences, Saffron was asked to produce a short brand video that could work as an elevator pitch. With a script that brought simplicity to the sophisticated features of the product and animation that captured its brilliant aesthetic, our video was the perfect way to cap off the project and our journey with Arcual.
As reported in the FT, the brand launched on November 3rd and the product will preview at Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2022.
Find out more here.