Working with Pentagram
Down the branding path
At the founding Lightmatter, our philosophy was that nothing else mattered but technology and team development. As a result, we minimized our spend on branding—initially using Envato and a friend of Darius for our logo and web presence. After our Series A-1 with Google Ventures, we decided to step up our game a bit and work with FireArt Studio to up our website game and develop some illustrations that would tie everything together.
I wanted to really highlight the photonics components in an isometric style, so I sent them prompts.
After a few iterations, we arrived at the following. We chose the grey background to allude to the moon—Lightmatter is a moonshot, after all. Red and blue were specifically chosen to welcome all genders to the company and to mix a sense of traditional reliability (blue, think Intel) with extreme performance (red, think Ferrari).
A consistent identity
We kept this identity until Fall 2020 when we decided to partner with a premier design firm: Pentagram. I left the first call with Natasha Jen with a clear impression that we were in excellent hands. She was fun, a good listener, and she’s was cool!
After going through the contract negotiation phase, we kicked off the project. First up, we needed to tell them our story and share who we were. The sessions were inspiring. I can’t speak for what Darius did, but I told them my life story and why I decided to dedicate a sizable chunk of my life to Lightmatter. They interviewed a number of employees at the company and each came back feeling inspired and that we were in excellent hands.
The output of this time with Kyle Barron-Cohen was a beautiful story in PDF form that succinctly described Lightmatter as they (accurately) saw it. When Kyle and Natasha presented the document, I felt emotional. They had distilled the eigenconcepts that underly my love for computing history and the feeling that our mission gives me. Incredible.
Next up, we worked with Natasha on selecting a visual brand identity. The inputs to the process were Darius and my love of gaming (incredible brands like Atari), science (NASA being a prototype of this), and iconic design companies like Leica. The Lightmatter wordmark we settled on as uncomfortably asymmetric and highly memorable. The “L” symbol gives me multiple feelings: (1) up and to the right, (2) Atari, and (3) something alien and new. The “M” symbol evokes the NASA worm logo and high art. Both symbols are combining curvilinear and Manhattan geometries—with curvilinear shapes being core features of photonic components and Manhattan shapes closely tied to electronic components.
After completing our brand identity, we worked with Jon Marshall to apply it our compute hardware. Jon has done work in the hardware space, even in the area of computing. We set out to create enclosures for both Envise and Passage—our compute and interconnect products. Jon’s process took into account all of the brand identity and copy work. Initial concepts included a light box (as opposed to a black box), different wave-like textures, and finally, a design based on the Mach-Zehnder interferometer (a photonic device that I have spent a decade working with).
We arrived at the design above, which is both minimalistic and complex, simultaneously. It approximates a standard grill that would enable airflow while visualizing a core photonic component that is used in most photonic systems that are built and sold. I love it.
Closing thoughts
I spent six years designing computer hardware in SolidWorks and Blender. Over that time, I developed a passion for minimalist, functional design. Having the opportunity to work with world-renowned designers has been a dream. The idea of eventually changing careers and focusing on industrial design and illustration is even more attractive after being exposed to the team at Pentagram…perhaps after building a few companies and contributing more to science.
