Play Studio Creates Brand Redesign for Cantos

Cantos is a venture capital firm focused on investing in future-changing technologies in the realms of climate, techbio, aerospace and computing. We’re talking about the complex worlds of satellite broadband communications, RNA therapeutics , plant based bio manufacturing, portable fission reactors, scalable quantum computing and more. We collaborated with them to create a new brand identity system that would accurately reflect and give life to their bold mission. Our work began with developing a strong anchor for the design system, the logomark. After weeks of exploring hundreds of concepts, we narrowed our focus to some type of symbolic portal to the future. We finally landed on an elegant four-sided sphere. But spheres don’t have sides, do they? In the Cantos world of near-frontier exploration they do. The logo animates to give the illusion that you’re moving through the portal into the future. The sides of the logo shrink and dissolve into the background creating an effect that feels like you’re entering hyperspace. When static, the logo is equally dramatic. One at a time, you can actually see each letter of the name “Cantos” within the four-sided spherical shape. The system also boasts a sophisticated, futuristic color palette. We selected an array of vibrant gradients of blues, greens and purples. Each appears across the brand collateral and website speaking with a regal confidence to a fluid future dynamically coming into focus. We redesigned the Cantos website layout to give proper weight and focus to their portfolio companies. Each one lives within a sort of academic flash card that utilizes contemporary photography accompanied by a brief description of the company’s line of business as well as their mission. For type, we chose PX Grotesk, a rather new semi-serif font that embeds a pixel-grid structure into a classic, optically adjusted drawing. It perfectly grounds the typography with a utilitarian rigidity that elegantly complements the more expressive elements elsewhere.