ThoughtMatter Takes Aim at the NFT Glass Ceiling with New Identity for Phenom, World of Women

While the rise of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) has promised to empower content creators and democratize wealth, much of that has been lost on the women of crypto who have been largely left out of the conversation. Studies show that twice as many men invest in crypto than women, and women only make up 16% of the NFT market. To confront this inequity is the mission of World of Women (WoW), an NFT collectible collection created by Yam Karkai, who successfully launched a series of female-focused NFTs with three other partners, earning global acclaim with a total trade volume of over 28,000 Ethereum (~ USD 101M). Hoping to evolve its brand to match its ambition for growth, WoW partnered with New York-based brand design studio ThoughtMatter for a new identity and website that embodies its mission of inclusivity.

World of Women consists of 10,000 unique female portraits or tokens, generatively created based on Karkai’s artwork. Each celebrates diversity with unique attributes, including hair, accessories, background, outfit, skin tone, and more, resulting in 11 different traits and 189 total features. In creating a brand to exemplify these principles, WoW found that ThoughtMatter not only understood brand-building in the nascent NFT space but the need to capture the rich and boundless diversity of women portraits in a way that would draw more women to the cause.

From the beginning, ThoughtMatter recognized the value and importance of bringing more diverse perspectives to the NFT space. "Our team has been following the crypto and NFT spaces closely, with some actually joining World of Women and quickly realizing that there was something special about the community and mission,” explains ThoughtMatter Managing Director Jessie McGuire. “This is all new territory, which is incredibly exciting. For the entirety of modern branding, a brand has been defined as intangible. But with web3 and general-purpose technologies like NFTs as a backbone, the brand can now be qualified and collectively owned by a community that has a vested interest in its success. Plus, their mission is perfectly aligned with our values.”

Approaching WoW’s identity through this lens of shared momentum, ThoughtMatter viewed each NFT as a building block -- a small piece of a larger whole that symbolizes WoW’s community and token holders, working together to create a more inclusive digital art future. It resulted in an identity built on a foundation of block-based grids featuring the WoW acronym, with a prismatic palette and an O that could function as a frame or portal to host the NFT portraits (or other visuals). This approach guided everything from the World of Women logo, to icons, to a range of visuals executed across various brand touchpoints.

By drawing its colors from Karkai’s dynamic artwork and using the NFTs as a functional part of the logo, ThoughtMatter hoped to build in a moment of representation in the identity itself -- solidifying WoW’s commitment to its mission. Applied across the newly designed and reorganized website, this new brand identity communicates the complexity of WoW’s offering while allowing flexibility and showcasing its community as a central element of the brand. “We wanted to plan a system that allowed for exponential growth, be it other collections, new partnerships, and collaborations, or for more community involvement and representation,” adds McGuire.

The refreshed brand establishes WoW at the center of a more vibrant creative ecosystem that isn’t solely conceived through a narrow lens of gender, age, or ethnicity. “Through design, we’re able to visually communicate the vastness of WoW,” says McGuire. “Too often are NFT projects focused on exclusivity. This is something more inspiring and centered around community, just as much as it’s centered around NFTs. To have the opportunity to build a brand foundation that allows for community members to be highlighted bridges the gap between the physical and digital space -- providing greater access, and giving token holders a true stake in the brand, truly embodies our motto of “Work Worth Doing”.