Over the past few months, we have been working diligently to better articulate Avantgarde’s vision and brand identity. Forcing ourselves to think harder about what we do and why we do it.
Through the highs and lows of market cycles, we have been motivated by the following fundamental beliefs:
- Transparency — The ability to provide everyone equal access to the same financial information
- Enablement — Empowering investment managers to build and monetise complex financial products in minutes
- Access — Making attractive investment opportunities as easy to access as shopping on Amazon
With this in mind, we have crystallised a north-star vision, mission and tagline that encapsulates our dream of a brighter future.
As a rallying call to ourselves and our partners, our vision ensures that our products and services bring transparency and simplicity to asset management.
As the impetus that drives us forward, our mission is to revolutionise the experience of asset management so we can disrupt the status quo and create a new paradigm for financial performance.
Through a combination of boundless thinking and unprecedented rigour, we help our clients achieve radical impact — whatever the mandate. In doing so, we help our clients untether the norms to DeFi gravity.
Below we have outlined how we are bringing these ideas to life — via our brand refresh, company values and market positioning.
Part I. Avantgarde’s Brand Refresh
Today, we’re incredibly excited to share the new branding for Avantgarde.
To capture the essence of our vision, mission and tagline we have conducted a full brand refresh, which includes a revamped main logotype, new sub-brand identification and a vibrant colour palette. Let’s take a look at each of these in more detail.
Main Logotype
The new Avantgarde logo takes a bold look at the future with a nod to our heritage and past.
The rhino icon features bold edges and an upwards facing trajectory that symbolises strong financial performance and echoes our drive to help our clients DeFi gravity. Despite the incredible growth of Avantgarde in the past few years, we remain astutely aware of where we have come from. The rhino icon is a testament to that, as the first team to put its trust in what Avantgarde had built was named… Rhino Fund.
Beneath the icon we have Avantgarde’s new customised wordmark, which is designed to be distinctive and bold. Together, the typography and icon mirrors our values of boundless thinking and radical impact.
The main logotype is designed to serve as an extension of our brand identity, though it can flex to meet various specifications. It works well in a variety of contexts as shown below.
Horizontal Logo
Stacked Logo
Background Pattern
Icon Design
Avantgarde’s sub-brands
In addition to Avantgarde’s primary branding, it has become clear as a business that we can better service our customers via the creation of unique sub-brands.
Each sub-brand has its own primary audience and core product offering, which will enable us to deliver more bespoke and refined solutions to all users that trust Avantgarde.
Our sub-brands are as follows:
As the core developers of the Enzyme protocol, Avantgarde Technology leverages our experience in both DeFi and traditional finance to build products and services on top of Enzyme, the DeFi Operating System.
Our Treasury team works collaboratively with both DAOs and corporate treasury managers to manage balance sheets in a safe and transparent manner while still taking full advantage of the rapid pace of innovation and iteration of new financial primitives.
Our Asset Management arm builds investment products that are powered by Enzyme vaults and provides DeFi-native advisory services for a wide variety of users.
New colour palette
Alongside our revamped logotypes, wordmark and icon, we have also introduced an updated colour palette. This colour palette has a dominance of black, pink and teal with accents of bright colour, each chosen to represent a unique aspect of the wider brand identity.
The dark pink represents our creativity as humans. The electric blue signifies limitless opportunities. And the warm grey characterises our innovative tech.
Final reflections
Taken as a whole, our new brand identity is an embodiment of our goal to DeFi gravity in everything we do. From the rhino icon to the wordmark, sub-brands and colour palette, we are excited to have created a visual identity that effortlessly translates our vision and mission into a reality.
Part II. The Values That Drive Us
Next, we have realigned and united around five key values that will bring our vision to life.
Our team lives and breathes these values each day in everything that we do, whether that be guiding our product vision or ensuring we stay focused on our collective mission.
1. Unprecedented rigour
We build with an extreme attention to detail whether it be future proofing, keeping things flexible for new use-cases, security considerations or preserving DeFi values.
2. Boundless thinking
We solve difficult problems that most people dismiss as impossible. We do this by being extremely creative and obsessed by what we do.
3. Radical impact
We’re turning one of the largest industries upside down in a way which will enable much more inclusion, better opportunities and higher safeguards to vulnerable players.
4. Pure value creation
We lead with an “eat your own dog food” mindset. This enables us to understand the needs of our customers early on and deliver thoughtful, innovative solutions which create value for them.
5. Daring leaders
We were and continue to be the first movers in many fields of DeFi and its evolution. We’re quick to admit when things don’t work and iterate on them.
Part III. Avantgarde’s Market Positioning
Until now, Avantgarde’s services have been primarily focused on bringing transparency to asset management by contributing to and leveraging the Enzyme protocol.
Over the coming months and years, you’ll see an expanding array of services that equip investment vault managers with more holistic tooling. This will consider different use-cases (eg. funds, indexes, etc) and encompass their business needs, compliance and development requirements frictionlessly. We will be shifting the user experience to a simple, vertically integrated experience.
Additionally, we will roll-out increasingly professional experiences that offer investors a much simpler way to evaluate and access investment opportunities in DeFi. Our promise is to enable people to be smarter and act faster. We do this by displaying boundless thinking matched with unprecedented rigour for radical impact.
Here is an overview of where we see ourselves in the marketplace and how we intend to deliver on our mission.
Avantgarde’s positioning
We are Avantgarde. The technologists, analysts and catalysts of on-chain asset management, optimised with the tools and expertise that put your imagination in control.
As the core contributor to the Enzyme protocol, we utilise our experience in both DeFi and traditional finance to build products and services on top of Enzyme, the DeFi Operating System.
Our goal is pure value creation that is simple, efficient, secure and future proofed. We enable investors, asset managers, businesses and DAOs to maximise operational, administrative and financial efficiencies when managing their assets.
This is how we untether the norms to DeFi Gravity:
- Investors: We build slick, seamless products that elevate the experience of DeFi while making it simple, easy and safe for investors to access the best that DeFi has to offer.
- DAOs: We help DAOs manage crypto balance sheets in a safe and transparent manner while still taking full advantage of the rapid pace of innovation and iteration of new financial primitives.
- Treasury Managers: We work collaboratively with corporate treasury managers to strategically and transparently earn higher yields that are in line with risk profiles and investment policies.
- Asset Managers: From investor management to strategy automation, Avantgarde provides tools and services to optimise the on-chain asset management experience.
Why is Avantgarde set up to succeed?
Increasingly, it’s becoming harder to compete with the work that Avantgarde has been doing over the last few years.
Track record and credibility
The core team behind Avantgarde Finance have been building in DeFi from as early as 2016. Enzyme has been around for 6 years and survived main-net deployment for 3.5 years without any major incidents, which has made it pretty hard to compete with as far as robust DeFi track records go.
Experience
Avantgarde is made up of very skilled and experienced people. The experience starts with TradFi and is matched with equally impressive DeFi experience, too. Our senior leaders have been involved in DeFi almost as long as DeFi has existed, and everybody on our team brings exceptional skill sets and knowledge that give us a highly unique positioning.
A deep understanding of tomorrow’s customer
Throughout our work with Avantgarde and Enzyme, we understand our current customer pain points and frustrations better than anyone else. But we haven’t stopped there. Over the years, we’ve also built a solid understanding of the customer segment not yet using DeFi and the reasons why. This is a key part of how we’re building for the future and thinking about how we onboard the next generation of DeFi users.
Resilience
This is not our first bear market. We’ve proven that our motivation and drive can stay high in the toughest of conditions. Avantgarde’s main driver is bigger than yield, bull markets or short term opportunities. We’re in this for the long run. Our strong positioning enables us to focus, build and grow so that we emerge on the other side stronger than we did last time.
Growth and marketing
Whichever way you look at it, Avantgarde’s investment in development, growth and marketing has demonstrated success in growth metrics versus our peers. If we can keep up this growth in ETH terms during the bear market, we’ll be very nicely positioned coming into the next bull market.
Get in touch
If you’d like to find out how we can help you untether the norms to DeFi gravity, then reach out to a member of our team below.
Business Development enquiries: Luca@avantgarde.finance
Marketing enquiries: Conor@avantgarde.finance
