Project Overview & Challenge

Womp Labs, a company specializing in token quality and identification for AI research, approached us to create a website and branding that would reflect their unique identity. The challenge was to craft a visual language that conveyed a sense of mystery, the occult, and the esoteric while maintaining a sense of modernity and professionalism.

Themes & Directions

The initial direction focused on establishing desired brand associations, including occult, esoteric, mysterious, and a sense of being lost in history but not old.

Inspiration

Narrowing in on the idea of secret documents being rediscovered and schematics describing forbidden technology, we gathered inspiration from various sources.

Type & Color Palette Explorations

To establish a neutral yet distinctive color palette, we agreed on subtle tones and the appearance of old paper. For the type, we combined serif and sans-serif fonts, mimicking how older mass-printed letterheads were combined with typewriters in large organizations.

The combination of a mechanical all-caps, narrow sans-serif with a classic serif felt closest to the desired aesthetic of old technical journals.

Graphic Explorations

We explored standalone graphics to pull together the themes and decisions made so far, aiming to settle on a main look to center the home page and brand around. The intent was to loosely imply Womp's technology process while presenting it in the accumulated styles and ideas from previous collaborations.

Initial Compositions

Refining further into the rough graphics, we pulled all the elements into mocked-up homepages to see if the composition was hitting the intended purpose.

Home Page Explorations Revision

Following a request to go deeper into esoteric shapes and arcane books, focusing more on organic graphics and less on the technical journal aesthetic, we revised the home page explorations.