Joe Studios: brand and surfaces for the TraderJoe incubator arm

Project overview

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Joe Studios is the creative studio and incubator arm inside the TraderJoe / LFJ ecosystem. As founding designer at TraderJoe, I designed the studio brand and the studios.lfj.gg umbrella surface - individual collection pages were owned by partner teams. The studio incubated five narrative NFT collections (Smol Joes, Smol Lands, Creeps, Rich Peon Poor Peon, Plague Game) which collectively traded over 80,000 AVAX on Joepegs.

Client

Joe Studios

Date

2022–2024

Industry

Web3 / Creative studio

Role

Founding Designer (TraderJoe), Studio Brand Lead

Timeline

Across my TraderJoe tenure

Stage

0 → 1 (studio brand)

Services

Brand, Web Design, Design System

Context

TraderJoe was a DEX, but the team had cultural ambition past the swap UI. Joe Studios was the answer: a creative studio launching narrative NFT collections under the TraderJoe banner, designed to share audience and infrastructure with the rest of the ecosystem. The brand challenge was to give the studio a distinct identity that read as bold and editorial, while still feeling like part of the same family as the DEX, Banker Joe, and Joepegs.

Problem

  • - A studio brand needs to feel distinct from the parent ecosystem without breaking from it.
  • - Each incubated collection has its own brand - the studio surface has to host them without flattening any of them.
  • - The studio is small headcount; the surfaces had to scale across many launches without redesign.
  • - No precedent inside the ecosystem for what a "studio brand" should look like.

Selected visuals

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Approach

The principles and concrete choices that shaped the work - what we picked, and why we picked it.

  1. 01

    Studio brand as a sibling, not a child

    Joe Studios sits inside the Joe ecosystem but speaks with its own voice and visual logic. The DEX, Banker Joe, and Joepegs share one chassis; Joe Studios shares only the deepest brand-family signals so the studio reads as editorial, not as a TraderJoe sub-page.

  2. 02

    studios.lfj.gg as a frame, not a template

    The umbrella surface gives each incubated collection room to express itself. Smol Joes, Plague Game, and Rich Peon Poor Peon do not look the same - the studio surface holds the through-line so they don't need to.

  3. 03

    Built to absorb launches without redesign

    Every new incubated collection ships into a slot the studio surface already supports. New launches did not require redesigning the umbrella.

Metrics

  • Incubated collections

    05 narrative NFT collections - Smol Joes, Smol Lands, Creeps, Rich Peon Poor Peon, Plague Game

    Joe Content

  • Combined secondary volume on Joepegs

    0 AVAX80,000+ AVAX traded across incubated collections on Joepegs marketplace

    Joe Content · Studio-wide volume; individual collection brands and partner teams drove most of it.

  • Live studio surface

    No studio brand or web surfaceStudio brand and studios.lfj.gg - live, hosting incubated launches

    Joe Studios

Impact

  • - Designed Joe Studios as a distinct brand inside the TraderJoe / LFJ ecosystem
  • - Built studios.lfj.gg as the umbrella surface for incubated collections
  • - Studio incubated 5 narrative NFT collections that traded 80K+ AVAX combined on Joepegs

Qualitative outcomes

  • - The studio reads as a sibling to TraderJoe, not a sub-page - distinct voice, shared family.
  • - Incubated collections shipped under one umbrella without losing their individual brands.
  • - New launches landed without requiring a redesign of the umbrella surface.
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