QuantumCyte
A logo, brand guidelines, a tradeshow booth and marketing materials for QuantumCyte, a biotech startup whose tool brings new precision to micro-dissection for pathologists. The whole identity grew from an image their own technology produced.
The answer was already under the microscope
The QuantumCyte team wanted a logo with clear roots in the science, and a palette that moved them into a whole new world, far from their old teal and orange. The feeling they asked for came in four words: futuristic, technical, modern, sleek.
The inspiration came from the work itself. Their tool produces images of stained tissue, dense and organic and full of magenta and violet. That single image set the color palette and the imagery for everything that followed.
Idea dumping and blob exploration
The early stage was pure play. I sketched the wordmark by hand again and again beside loose, cell-like forms, noting the imagery the brand called for: 3D, pink and blue, sleek, organic.
Then the blobs moved into three dimensions. A family of rendered forms let us test how organic the mark could feel while still reading as precise, technical and new.
From early rounds to the final mark
I experimented with a few shapes and color stories and shared them with the client. Together we narrowed in on the version that both of us felt carried the heart and soul of QuantumCyte: a dimensional gradient cell sitting behind Cyte, with Quantum in deep purple beside it.
The final logo arrived with a full set of variations, including a monochrome version and a bare-bones wordmark, so the mark works across every print and web surface. It became the starting point for the rest of the brand.
A system the whole team can use
The guidelines give every version of the logo a clear job: the primary lockup for white and for dark backgrounds, a monochrome version for documents and presentation headers, a bare-bones wordmark for emails and pitches, and versions for black-only and black and white printing. Clear space around the mark always equals the height of the “u” in Quantum.
The primary palette carries the story of the tissue imagery. Medium Blue signals trust and stability, while Razzle Dazzle Rose and the purples speak to wisdom and imagination. Dark Purple stands in for black and Pale Purple for white, softening every page while keeping contrast WCAG compliant. Electric Purple and Turquoise join as accents, used one at a time.
Type pairs DIN Pro for headings, the face behind the logo, with Inter for everything else, set in a light weight so the vivid colors can shine.
From a 3D plan to a real booth
This was QuantumCyte’s first big tradeshow, so the booth stayed simple and focused. I built a 3D rendering to plan the layout and chose rentals that fit the company’s budget, then carried the new identity onto the backdrop, the pull-up banner and the table.
The system traveled into print too: business cards with the cell mark and a QR code, and a poster for QuantumCyte’s workshop at AMP 2023 on intelligent automated microdissection.
