Play’s identity for Worldcoin upholds the collectively-owned currency’s drive for global equality

Collectively-owned global currency Worldcoin was created with the ambition of generating equality through biometric technology – made to be fundamentally understandable without undermining their intentions of securing a universal basic income. With such scale and expectation at stake, Worldcoin’s founding team turned to San Francisco-based branding studio Play in search of a slick visual identity that would balance technical mastery with approachability. Sitting front-and-centre of the resulting identity is Worldcoin’s community-inspired logo, constructed of seven abstract renderings of hands to represent the world’s seven continents, and therefore global humanity shared between them. Together, they construct a circle within their negative space, representing a physical coin and thus referring to one of the world’s oldest forms of exchange. Bringing it to the modern-day, and further cementing Worldcoin as the currency of the new world, Play engineered a 3D version of the symbol, aiming to champion both the technicality of the coin, as well as explore and challenge the tangibility of cryptocurrency. Bolstering the prominent use of the logomark is Play’s trio of typefaces. “Worldcoin’s typographic system is composed of three typefaces,” Founder and Creative Director Casey Martin tells us, “the primary font, Basel, is a sans serif with an international feel that provides high legibility at a variety of scales,” he explains, utilising Klim Type Foundry’s Untitled Serif as its authoritative counterpart. “ABC Diatype Mono is also used only for labels or diagrammatic elements within infographics and data visualisation,” Martin adds. “As a system, the three typefaces establish the foundation for a trustworthy and institutional tone.”