Cenoa is a blockchain powered neo-bank that came with a big task to help them bring fair, empowering and innovative financial services to everyone. It turned for a brand identity that would stand the test of time and unite all of the company’s ventures under a cohesive brand. Built by executives managed businesses wiht more than 50 million customers. Supported by world-class inventors with >$5 billion funds. Close the gap between your dreams and reality with Cenoa. You can start earning in a few minutes.

Cenoa wants to inspire to improving their financial health, no matter their financial expertise, to reach their dreams and live life to the fullest, with a vision of becoming the world’s favorite inspirer; maintaining their Mediterranean roots – colorful sea- inspired palette that is followed by their sail-shaped icon that represents their customers living their lives to the fullest. A truly international best-in-class brand and experience was critical to ensuring that Cenoa decides built trust with global merchants and consumers from the way of inspiring with the lifestyle visual effects.

Following the model for the human-centered design, we started the process with user research and observation, creative workshops / immersions and strategy, and ended with validation. This process provided us with a roadmap and a solid foundation to base our design solutions on user findings.

We worked with Cenoa over a period of 10 weeks to define their Brand Story, Look and feel, design direction, logo and key assets and then end up with a set of clear brand guidelines that will help them keep consistency while scaling in hypergrowth. The visual language is systematic and structured, yet human. This is visible through the main identity pattern, which derives from the logotype’s original shape, which depicts the process of growth — alluding to the constant development of the fintech community and its members.

Key Findings / values:

• We are owners: We think and act like owners, not renters. This is an exciting journey with a noble cause. We think long term. We do the best for the company, not for specific individuals or teams. We all take initiatives.
• We build dream teams. We are like a professional sports team, we strive to win. We attract, develop, and retain rockstars and place them in the right spots to win. We value teamwork over divas. We seek to receive and give unfiltered, decided and constructive feedback. We trust and hold each other accountable. We discuss constructively and commit ourselves to making decisions. We create a welcoming environment where people have an active voice and are themselves.
• Bias for Action: Speed matters. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking. We act with urgency and build& learn faster than anyone else. We keep taking initiatives, often big initiatives.

To understand were our product will stand in the market we decided to carry out a competitive analysis. This will help us to understand the strengths and weakness of competitors and to inform our design directions and decisions.

Immersion workshop with client made a fully understandings, how the brand should looks like, what are the problems and values, who are the real target competitors and also defined the Cenoa solutions and what problems on the market they are solving.

We made 3 different concepts with core elements: Italian Dolce Vita, Urban Contemporary Style, Retrowave Miami Style. Each of the concept with own style, preferences and look&feel. Everything was based on a client preference after our creative brand workshop. Then we finished with 2 routes with own style, colors, typography and rationale behind it.

The first step was to develop the brand strategy and visual direction. We took inspiration from Mediterranean roots – colorful sea-inspired palette that is followed by their sail-shaped icon that represents their customers living their lives to the fullest. The content strategy, art direction, experience brought us to these, that we can identify Cenoa’s Brand Persona as that of The Hero. We want to leave a mark on the world, show mastery in what we do and set ourselves as leaders.

The Creator can also be part of our Brand Persona, as we want to provide structure to the world with the solutions we bring in for people to make their lives better.
Cenoa’s Brand Persona can then be summed up into that of The Creative Hero.

• We will champion the industry and our consumers’ hearts.
• We will provide creative products, services and solutions to improve people’s lives.
• We will become trend setters and raise the bar for fintechs and neobanks worldwide.

Then we moved to the Brand Identity system creation.

Cenoa aspires to be a global brand but still maintaining their mediteranean roots. That’s why they opted for a colorful sea-inspired palette that is followed by their sail-shaped icon that represents their customers living their lives to the fullest.
Our tone of voice is that of an expert, without sounding arrogant. We are confident yet approachable, connecting through insights and real truths people encounter everyday. To communicate Cenoa’s position as a leading Turkish FinTech ecosystem, we created a bold wordmark logo design. The logotype is further complemented by a muted color palette, consisting of bold pastels that reflects the ambition to bring together talent, expertise, knowledge, and infrastructure to build the next generation financial services. Together, the brand assets convey the value of connection — the heart of Cenoa’s dynamic and progressive community.

“In just 10 weeks Superside was able to take us from no brand to an amazing brand that will help us take on the evolving world of Fintech and DeFi. The team’s experience in this space and experience building brands that stand out was invaluable to our team. The speed, quality and execution prowess has left us patting ourselves on the back that we didn’t go with a traditional agency.”

— Seçkin Çağlın / Co-founder, Cenoa

We collaborated closely with the customer and their product design team on developing assets they will use on their app and now 10 weeks later they are already launching their website. As Cenoa looks forward to the next decade, with their ambitious goal of reaching 2 billion users, we’re thrilled to have partnered with them to craft the strategy and brand that will take brand global. The result is a clean and confident brand that eschews the slick, cold norms of technology branding in favour of warmth and personality. The visual system boils down what the product does to a simple analogy which can stretch across the required markets and cultures.