According to the National Bank of Ukraine, in 2020, Ukrainian IT industry accounted for 8.3% of total exports, getting closer to traditional heavyweights of the national economy in terms of importance. Yet until recently the Ukrainian IT sector had been operated by outdated bureaucratic regulation, which slowed down its development and the influx of foreign investment.

To turn the tide, at the beginning of 2022, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine initiated Diia.City—a unique legal and tax space for IT business, where investors can safely put their money in Ukrainian companies, and residents can lead their business transparently, employing greatest IT minds and paying some of the lowest taxes in the world.

All this made Diia.City one of the world’s best legal zones for IT companies, start-ups, and investors. But to be noticed by the whole world, such an ambitious project needed an equally noticeable brand.

At the beginning of 2022, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine initiated Diia.City—a unique legal and tax space for IT business, where investors can safely put their money in Ukrainian companies, and residents can lead their business transparently, employing greatest IT minds and paying some of the lowest taxes in the world.

To make Diia.City noticed by the international IT companies and investors, the agency sought to develop branding as dynamic as the industry and residents, for whom this space was launched. Our idea was to create a brand pattern, which anyone can interact with and change in an endless variety of ways in real time: be it on stage of the most influential tech event in Ukraine like Diia Summit, or on Diia.City site.

Since Diia.City is an independent brand of a legal space, it required a bespoke logo and design system. But in our case, the existing visual identity of Diia.Digital State became an umbrella brand. It was important to keep both of them equal, and we adhered to this principle while designing the Diia.City design system.

Thus, the Diia.City pattern became an evolution of Diia’s dynamic gradient. To make it interactive and changing, we used the cables.gl tool—a JavaScript and WebGL wrapper that allows to create interactive visualizations without code, changing them in an endless variety of ways. In one of the examples, the image was assembled from several layers which overlap and interact to create the desired effect, for example, a variation of computer-based visual effect named Plasma.

We based the Diia.City layout on a block system so that it could be easily divided into the content and logo parts. Blocks allow to separate and organize content, and can be merged if needed, keeping the brand dynamic and changing, yet recognizable.

On February 8, 2022, during the public launch of Diia.City brand announced at Diia Summit, which is the biggest technological event in Ukraine, more than 3k visitors of the event and more than 50k its online viewers could see and interact the Diia.City logo in real time.

Apart from Diia Summit the interactive branding has been used on the official Diia.City site (city.diia.gov.ua) and set the visual tone for communication on Facebook, Instagram & other SMM channels of the Ministry of Digital Transformation.

The Diia.City brand was introduced to 3k+ audience and more than 50k people watched it aired online at Diia Summit—the most important technological event in Ukraine, where the country’s leaders introduce the latest state technological achievements to the citizens, government and IT entrepreneurs. On the launch day the Diia.City site was visited 7,8k times, and the number of visits a month after the launch exceeded 60k.

This resulted in 177 companies applied and accepted as residents of Diia.City so far, including Samsung, Revolut, Reface, MacPaw, Ajax Systems to name a few.