Open Event System · 2022–2025
FIL City Event Brand System
- Branding
- Events
- Ecosystem
Overview
Filecoin’s ecosystem runs on its communities, and those communities wanted to run their own events - in more cities than any central creative team could design for. FIL City is the system I built to say yes to all of them: an open design framework that lets a community in Bangkok or Brussels host a coherent, on-brand Filecoin event without a designer in the loop.
Approach
The real design decision was where to draw the line between what stays fixed and what gets handed over. Hold too much centrally and every event still lands on my desk; hand over everything and the brand dissolves into whatever each city likes. So the system defines both zones explicitly - a fixed visual language every event shares, and named areas where local organisers are expected to make it their own.
Designed to be given away
Most brand guidelines assume a designer will read them. FIL City assumes the opposite - the person opening the files is probably a community organiser with a laptop and a deadline. That shaped everything: working files over specifications, templates that survive being edited by non-designers, guidance written as what-to-do rather than what-not-to-do. The whole kit - templates, working files and guidelines - is published at fil-city.io for anyone to download, because a brand for a decentralised ecosystem has to be usable by people I will never meet.
On the ground
The proof is what comes back. These events were built by local teams working from the published kit - I was not in the room, and the identity held anyway. Each city looks like itself and unmistakably like Filecoin at the same time, which is exactly the trade the system was designed to make.
Outcomes
FIL City has powered 12 events over three years across North America, EMEA and APAC, with ten city identities - Bangkok to Cape Town - published openly at fil-city.io. As an open toolkit it works two ways: ecosystem participants get everything they need to run on-brand events independently, and the internal design team moves faster on its own packed calendar. Either way, one identity travels worldwide without a bigger team behind it.