Eighteen years ago, Andrew Wilkinson founded Metalab in his basement on a small island in British Columbia. What started as a local venture is now a global team of 160+ people working across 15+ countries.

As we’ve grown, we’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with some of the most iconic brands of our time to ship world-class digital products.

Over time, we’ve also matured. Many of us have become parents. Others have adopted dogs.

We’ve expanded our services, building specialized teams in research and strategy, product, and engineering. We’re serving bigger clients than ever before.

Through all that growth, we’ve held on dearly to the qualities that make us special...

Our Canadian roots and the human care they bring. The instinct to challenge conventional norms, seeking innovative ways to create. Our sense of fun. Personality. And our laser focus on product.

While we’ve been evolving quietly over the years, our brand had not.

It was time to outwardly reflect the internal growth of our team. To show the company we are today, the quality we deliver for our clients, and the vision we have for the future.


Our brand exploration was broad. We developed a range of ideas. Some closely rooted in our legacy, and some completely new.

Many of those new brand looks were exciting — but they weren’t quite right. It felt like we were steering off and becoming a bit too slick or a bit too trendy at times.

In the end, after one or two 'check file size' alerts worth of explorations, we selected the parts of the existing brand that were most true to us — our logo, playful personality, and that bold purple.

Then, we fleshed them out, buttoned them up, and polished them up.

When we work with clients, we’re not just creating products that look good. It’s about crafting an experience. How someone feels as they use a product.

That’s why establishing a brand’s core emotion is so important.

At the outset, client projects are full of unknowns. There are unlimited possibilities of what we can achieve as a team. For many people, that might be daunting. For us, it’s exciting.

And so we landed on 'wonder' as our core emotion as it captures our fascination for the unknown.

 wonder. We had to figure out how to create an experience that would leave people with 

In execution, the different components of our brand design and website go into evoking that feeling.

The biggest shift to our brand is the logo. We dropped the playful gyroscope in favour of a strong, gorgeous, wordmark crafted from TWK Everett. Our name is our reputation, and our reputation has gotten us this far.

We’ve been struggling internally with the PascalCase nature of our name for a long time. When Metalab was first founded, the way of naming on the internet was wildly all over the place, and a CoolName™ was all you need to bootstrap your unicorn.

We’re in a different phase of the internet now, and it’s due time we modernize our stylistic choice of how we typeset our name.

Our wordmark does the job 90% of the time. But in our digital world, you need something that fits nicely in a 1x1.

We riffed on probably 30 executions before landing on the star. We tried gyroscopes and kaleidoscopes. We even took a run at pixels. In the end, simplicity won — as it tends to.

It was important to pay homage to our heritage with the icon. Looking at the anatomy of our old logo, we realized that in its simplest form, it breaks down to a four-pointed star.

There’s a lot to love about the star as a form. It represents magic, awe, something greater. It’s the epitome of wonder when you think about it.

Yet it wasn’t until we started layering and adding motion to the shape that we were sold.

We live in digital products, so it made sense to leverage motion. The simple star is our core mark. But it doesn’t always stay that way.

It evolves, shifts, spins, and multiplies to create more complex stars that speak to an infinite number of possible outcomes. This movement represents that our work comprises many moving parts: sometimes simple, but often complex, crafted with deep focus, collective curiosity, and skill.

The star is as unique and adaptable as we are.

 is our leading typeface. It’s beautifully simple, clean, clear, and easy to read. It’s also a nod back to early grotesques.

To maintain an elegant feel, we don’t go any heavier than Medium. Instead, use underlines and strikethroughs for emphasis.

 is our wonderful, supportive secondary typeface. A beauty of a serif, chosen for its elegance, high contrast, and unusual curves and angles.

Basis does most of the work, with Eiko punctuating in moments of impact and joy. Together, they are beautifully balanced and simple — and look great if all you do is type it out.

Purple had become our most identifiable brand element. One we felt affection for — and decidedly couldn’t lose. 

We own #584DFF, and you see this colour across modern product design. We take it as a compliment.

It was important to keep the iconic colour, but previously, there were no neutrals and nothing to support it or set it off. It lacked a level of refinement — and if I’m being honest, we lacked restraint.

The new palette is built around the core purple, adding a richer purple shade and a simple set of neutrals: black, white, and gray.

Base neutrals are used predominantly, setting the scene for work and the message. Our core accent purple is used sparingly. A pop of colour here and there. No more than 5% of space on a single page.

The work that we do is dynamic and ever changing. Same with the world of design and technology. Trends come and go. What’s hot today won’t last forever.

It was important for us to build a core brand identity that would stand the test of time while also making room for us to play and evolve with the times.

Our wordmark, typeface, and palette all feel timeless. While the star lends itself to infinite possibilities.

It can morph and change, and because of that, there’s a built in seasonality to the brand language.

We played with many different 3D renders — glass, balloons, metal, even fuzz — and many different angles, ultimately landing on a set that is right for the brand right now.

Yet, it can evolve and shift into any material of our choosing. Leaving room for what will feel right tomorrow.

Evolving with Intent