Client project / 02

Making institutional crypto content credible.

Tokenized is the leading podcast on stablecoins, tokenization and real-world assets, hosted by Simon Taylor and Cuy Sheffield of Visa. I designed the full site solo — the job was to make a crypto media brand feel trustworthy to bank executives, not just onchain natives.

Role

Sole UI/UX Designer

Timeline

6 weeks, discovery to launch

Tools

Figma → dev handoff

Outcome

Trusted by 3,750+ finance leaders

The brief

"Crypto content for grown-ups."

Simon and Cuy had the credibility: three decades of finance and payments experience between them, and guests from JPMorgan, Circle and Visa. The site didn't. Most podcast and crypto-media sites lean on neon gradients and meme energy; that reads as noise to the compliance officers and treasury leads this show is actually for. The brief was to design something that felt closer to an institutional research desk than a crypto blog, without losing any warmth or personality.

Audience problem

Bank and payments executives don't trust sites that look like every other crypto project. The design itself had to signal rigor.

Content problem

Podcast, newsletter and a growing library of explainer articles all needed one coherent home, not three disconnected products.

Business problem

Sponsors and guest brands needed a "Work with us" story that read as media kit, not an afterthought contact form.

Timeline: 6 weeks, solo

Week 1

Discovery

Brand audit, competitor sites, content inventory

Weeks 2-3

Visual design

Style guide, homepage, hosts & sponsors

Weeks 4-5

Content system

Learn/article template, podcast player, work-with-us

Week 6

Handoff & launch

Dev handoff, QA passes, launch

Visual design

A palette built for a research desk, not a hype cycle.

Near-black replaces the usual neon-on-black crypto look, with a single confident blue standing in for "trust" and a cyan accent for the tokenization/RWA storyline. No gradients, no glow effects — just enough restraint to read as institutional.

Signal Blue

RWA Teal

Gold accent

Surface

Base

Space Grotesk: Headline

Stablecoins, tokenization and RWAs.

Inter: Body

Set at 16px with generous line height so long-form articles and show notes stay readable for a desk-bound, screen-all-day audience.

Final site

Five sections doing the trust-building.

Homepage hero

The podcast for stablecoins, tokenization and RWAs.

Listen Now Watch

Join 3,750+ onchain finance leaders

Trusted-by bar

Morgan Stanley JPMorgan Circle Visa Revolut AWS

Meet the hosts

Simon Taylor

Head of Market Development at Tempo; creator of Fintech Brainfood; co-founder, 11:FS.

Cuy Sheffield

VP, Head of Crypto at Visa, leading stablecoin and RWA work with banks and issuers.

Podcast player

Ep. 42: How Banks Are Actually Using Stablecoins

38:12

Learn: article grid

Article

What Are Stablecoins and How Do They Work?

Fiat-backed stablecoins explained for finance professionals.

Regulation

The GENIUS Act Explained

What US stablecoin regulation means for the industry.

Strategy

How Banks Make Money from Stablecoins

Eight revenue models for traditional banks.

Outcome

A site institutional guests are happy to be seen on.

150k

Google impressions over 12 months, 112k in the last 90 days alone

2,156

organic clicks at an average search position of 9

170

pages live, including a Learn section ranking for queries like "what is DeFi yield"

0

touch-ups needed since launch — episodes sync automatically

"

★★★★★

"It has become one of our best assets. Over the last 12 months the site appeared in Google results just under 150,000 times and earned 2,156 clicks at an average position of 9 — and the growth is recent, with 112,000 of those impressions in the last 90 days alone. It's a proper content site, 170 pages including a Learn section that ranks for questions like 'what is DeFi yield', with new episodes syncing automatically. We have never had to touch it. Happy to recommend them."

P

Pet Berisha

Founder, Tokenized

Reflection

Working solo on a live client site meant every design call also had to be a scoping call: what's a "nice to have" versus what actually needs building in six weeks. Restraint on the palette early on paid off later: the content system (articles, sponsors, work-with-us) all slotted into the same visual language without a single new design pattern.