Branding Proposal

Brand Recommendation Proposal Translations

Japanese: HERE

Spanish: HERE

Russian: HERE.

Italian: HERE.

Chinese: HERE

Summary of the Catapult Brand Recommendation Proposal
For NEM Community and Core Team Vote

CATAPULT BRAND RECOMMENDATION PROPOSAL LAUNCH

On December 19, 2019, at 3:00 PM PST (December 19, 2019, at 8:00 AM, UTC+9) there will be a vote on the proposed Catapult brand recommendation. It will be a non-binding POI yes/no vote on the combined items summarized below.

  • Brand Name
  • Brand Logo and Icon
  • Brand Ticker
  • Brand Identity

After significant work, the Catapult Brand Steering Committee has reached an agreement on this proposal. Contributions came from NEM Foundation, NEM Studios, NEM Ventures, Better Way Brand Agency, supernode owners, community members, core team and ecosystem partners.

image
Voting will take place on the NEM public chain using the NEM Wallet. Please note: In order to vote you must download and upgrade to the latest version of the NEM Wallet (version 2.4.7) found at https://nem.io/downloads/.

The voting process is as follows:

  1. Voting will commence on December 19, 2019, at 3:00 PM PST and will end on January 2, 2020, at 3:00 PM PST, taking into account the public holidays during this period.
  2. Voting will be considered valid if there is a minimum of 3% POI voting in either direction. (Note: “YES” & “NO” votes are not combined.)
  3. A YES vote must win a 65% majority for the vote to be considered successful for the non-binding vote.
  4. Step-by-step voting instructions can be found HERE.
  5. Once the voting period has ended, the results and next steps will be announced by the Catapult Brand Steering Committee in the NEM Forums.
  6. If the result ends in ‘YES’ votes with a minimum of 3% POI and 65% majority criteria, the brand proposal will be considered as approved and the Brand Steering Committee will proceed with meeting the project timeline. If the result ends with insufficient ‘YES’ votes without the minimum of 3% POI or 65% majority criteria, the Brand Steering Committee will follow up with the Core Team and key NEM ecosystem partners on the best next steps based on feedback provided, with the goal of preventing delays in the upcoming launch.

image **Video Summary: HERE and Logo Evolution HERE

Video Translations

Japanese: HERE

Spanish: HERE

Russian: HERE

Italian: HERE

Chinese: Forthcoming

More detailed documentation here:

  • Brand Discovery Recap HERE.
  • Market Research documentation
    • Discovery Presentation HERE.
    • Competitor Social Media Presentation HERE.
    • Competitor Creative Presentation HERE.
  • Detailed video from the Better Way Brand Agency HERE.

We recommend going through the documents and video presentations in order to make the most informed decision before voting.

image

image

Tagline: “Powering Possibility”

Ticker Options:

  • SYMBL
  • SYMBOL
  • SBN (Symbol By NEM)
  • SFN (Symbol From NEM)

image

Symbol’s marketing communications will be mainly focused on enterprise users, especially in Fintech, Healthcare, Gaming, Real Estate, Supply Chain, Insurance, Education, and Government.

These are where we have the highest competitive advantages. Competitors in these industries can’t match Symbol’s key selling points, which include:

  • Simplicity and speed of enterprise deployment, driven by Symbol’s plugin engine.
  • Security and reliability, driven by a blockchain architecture optimized for high performance.
  • Native compatibility between chains, and public/private chain data.
  • Open-source and fully trustless.

Symbol = A connector between blockchain and business

We plan to reach outside the crypto industry to a broader business audience. It’s critical that our communications focus on tangible benefits like:

  • Create, exchange, and protect your assets with the power of blockchain.
  • Cut costs and complexity.
  • Improve effectiveness and efficiency; realize value quicker.
  • Reduce time-to-market. Get to proof-of-concept faster than any other trustless platform allows.

As the crypto industry matures, there will be big opportunities for trustless platforms focused specifically on business needs. As Symbol establishes success in these industries over time, there will also be opportunities to expand its focus to broader crypto use cases like retail.

Symbol will also focus messaging on developers and building its open-source community.

image

Symbol’s logo design was inspired by a nod to NEM’s community and history by incorporating the Fibonacci Method into the design. HERE

image

Symbol’s goal is to provide enterprise users with the simplest, strongest, and highest-performing blockchain platform.

Drawing from NEM’s DNA, Symbol’s values are openness, trustlessness, and empowerment. The tagline “Powering Possibilities” means possibilities for business, but also for developers, ecosystem members, investors, and those who want to create or make things better for society.

Symbol sees a future economy of interoperable tokenized assets and rights, and our vision is to lead the way to that future.

image

  • Symbol Blockchain is the trusted, secure value exchange network for business.
  • Symbol reduces business friction, increases trust, and expands the flow of ideas to accelerate innovation.
  • We enable enterprises and developers, organizations and individuals, to create value together. Because together, everything is possible.

image
When it comes to how we speak to our audiences, we will adopt the same core principles to represent the brand.

Example of how the brand personality could be reflected in multi-media:

image

image
Symbol blockchain – open for business

Symbol provides the canvas for businesses to create, exchange and protect their assets

Transform the way you do business with Symbol

Cut costs and complexity;

improve effectiveness and efficiency; realize value quicker.

Together, everything is possible

Collaboration is at the heart of Symbol: it’s simple to create value together - for enterprise and developers who see possibilities.

The trusted, secure value exchange network for business

Symbol empowers the secure exchange of all assets.

For The Value Builders

Symbol is for the do-ers, the makers and originators, the entrepreneurs and creators – the people who want to participate.

The pragmatists. The optimists.

The self-starters.

image
SECURE

  • The more confidence you have in your tech, the more open you are to explore and create.
  • Verify value through Symbol’s plugin engine and put trust back into your business.
  • Minimize risk by creating multiple co-signatories (MultiSig) to approve transactions on Symbol.

INTEROPERABLE

  • Our technology smooths business friction, increasing the flow of interaction, information and innovation.
  • Symbol works with your existing technology so your business can focus on creating value.
  • Symbol blockchain works effortlessly across chains.

FAST AND EFFICIENT

  • Our technology is intuitive to create with and build on.
  • Symbol provides a secure and trusted platform to unblock, empower and speed up the processes that drive business.

image
The brand steering committee, in partnership with A Better Way creative agency, selected this branding after a thorough evaluation process and competitive marketplace analysis. Here are some reasons this branding rose above the rest:

  • Symbol is easy to say, remember, and understand. (Works well in kanji too.)
  • The name and visuals are high-tech, professional, and yet distinct from competitors.
  • Symbol relates to the idea of tokenizing assets - a symbol represents an idea or object, just as a token represents an asset, claim, or bundle of rights.
  • The logo visually conveys a hub or connection.
  • It compares favorably to the branding of other technology products.
  • It leans into the strengths of the technology and marketplace opportunity.
  • It has a low risk of brand confusion or trademark conflicts.

image
Many of you have supported NEM since early on – thank you.

Some of you are newer to the community and are curious about learning more about the tech and what differentiates it from other blockchain protocols on the market today. You’ve probably read the documentation on GitHub or Qiita, downloaded the NEM Wallet, built some projects on NEM, or perhaps you’ve gone into Slack, BitcoinTalk or the Telegram channels Red or HelpDesk to get a sense of how things work in the NEM ecosystem beyond the typical POCs. Almost all of you, most likely, have heard about “Catapult”.

We hope this proposal helps inspire you to see a brighter future with the next evolution of products in the NEM ecosystem and the opportunities we have to fulfill the original community vision.

Thank you for your consideration and support,

Catapult Brand Steering Committee

Alexandra Tinsman

Dave Hodgson

David Shaw

Dan Bobby (Better Way Agency)

Dan Rowe (Better Way Agency)

Jeff McDonald

Katie Barber (Better Way Agency)

Lewis Farrell

31 Likes

Is there a possibility of different Tickets? Like SYN or even YYY?

3 Likes

Incredible :heart::raised_hands::heart:

This is some good work from the foundation. I love it. Even though I was little mad about not publishing accurate timeline of testnet or wallet I strongly believe that the foundation and the president will push NEM/Symbol to the next level.

Thank you Alex.

6 Likes

The plan is to do POI vote on ticker name in early Q1 but we can take this feedback to the team for when they do that POI vote. For now, the focus is getting feedback on this proposal. :pray:

4 Likes

IMO - The ticker options mentioned are either too long, or must be spelled out when referenced, like it’s a news outlet.
EG: We say “xem” as a word, not spelled out as “X. E. M.”

I like SY, SYN, or SYM. There are a couple barely known projects using the SYM ticker, though.

The Y shape is okay, but when used in text, it may be confusing. EG: Saying I accept $, €, „, and Y as payment.
Some additional attention may need to be given to the character given. Rotate the Y shape slightly, or otherwise make it more unique to existing characters.

Although very purple, and bit generic looking, everything else is fine.

4 Likes

Good design

3 Likes

Hi,
I was really thinking we were going to have some more options for the logo and the token name not just only one. You really need to think about proposing some more.

I think the name symbol is not bad but i will prefer something that really is a unique thing like for example ethereum. If you search that in google you are going to find just what you are looking for not a lot of result were you finally don’t know were to go. Searching Symbol on google you find a lot of companies, websites


The Logo is not bad neither but is not really awesome like the XEM one. Something like the transaction logos of ETH or even ETC could be very good with the XEM logo. Xem logo is the best and really give someone to want to were in a t-shirt


Tickers prefer the first two.
I like the election of the colour.
Sorry been negative but I really love the old logo and really dont want to lose it and im sure a lot of people think like me.

Anyway thank you for the work.

8 Likes

Good job. Can we keep the old logo, with all these new stuff in this proposal?

Why not incorporate Nem’s three colours into the three sections of the logo? It would add some distinctiveness to something that looks pretty plain at the moment.

4 Likes

I’m sorry to say, I feel it boring proposal, Boring name, Boring logo.

I prefer more cool and cute one !

The second option “Sekoya” sounds better. But what does “Sekoya” mean ?

1 Like

There are different accent colour variants for the logo. I’ll try to get them posted here.

1 Like

Sekoya is a nod to the Sequoia tree, one of the largest and strongest in the world.

2 Likes

I believe the old logo will stay with the NEM branding and will continue to be of historical importance to our journey. The inclusion of the Fibonacci Method with the golden ratio really paid homage to the original logo.

The new logo has a sense of simplicity to it (like the name) but when you look twice, a lot of creative thinking has been put behind it. I guess the point is to make blockchain technology as simple as possible so that mass adoption is within reach right?

Not everyone needs to understand it but what is important is that they know that it simplifies things (cuts through complexity, improves effectiveness etc.) for businesses and people through our technology.

As for the ticker, this is a good point:

I liked SYMBL but after some thought, you actually have to explain and spell for particular situations Something worthy of more discussion and a POI vote.

4 Likes

Thank you !
I prefer Sekoya.

I’m confused about the dropping of “Catapult” as any meaningful reference here? NEM has been talking about Catapult since 2014 (for better or worse), I appreciate it is just a a version name but shouldn’t this reference it?

This was a trademark issue and we could not legally call it catapult. Too many trademark issues.

2 Likes

And through the past 5 years of talking about this no one thought to check / register it? :thinking:
I like the branding and identity of it - I just think Catapult which has been promised since 2014 needs to at least feature in the marketing of this somehow


1 Like

Good point but I don’t think it was ever seriously considered as ‘the’ name. Thanks for the feedback though.

1 Like

WOW! This is incredible and way better than I expected.
Love the logo, good choice on colour and the “Y” shape logo is perfect. DNA and molecules that can interconnect through bonds comes to mind straight away.
Perfect visualisation of what a blockchain should be.

6 Likes

Catapult was always a codename, much like how windows vista was codenamed longhorn before launch.

4 Likes