Case study · Freelance contract
Redesigning SKALE’s website, then keeping it consistent
Brief to live in about eight weeks, then a year and a half turning a one-off launch into a system marketing could keep shipping on.
Art director and lead designer · Piqo Studio · Apr 2022 – Dec 2023 · IA, page design, 3D direction, motion, Webflow CMS
The homepage hero. Colour lives only in the 3D objects; the interface stays black and white.
At a glance
Role
Art director and lead designer, through Piqo Studio, my design studio.
Engagement
Freelance contract.
Timeline
Apr 2022 – Dec 2023: the redesign from April to June 2022, then a monthly retainer.
Platform
Figma to Webflow CMS. 3D and motion made in-house.
Team
Me, a 3D designer, Webflow developers and a studio project manager. On the client side, SKALE’s marketing team.
Status
Shipped in June 2022. The build ran until at least November 2025; SKALE has since replaced it.
What SKALE is
SKALE is a network of Ethereum-compatible chains with zero gas fees for end users. I led the redesign of skale.space, its main site, for developers, validators, token holders and the press.
In early 2022 the site read like a whitepaper and looked like every other crypto site. The client asked Piqo for a space-themed visual identity and a redesigned site to launch it on.
One launch, three audiences, and a site that couldn’t go dark
The site had to work for developers, validators and token holders at once, with dense copy, a remote client and two months to ship.
The old site was linked from wallets and exchanges, so it could never go dark. And after launch, marketing would be updating it every week.
Explain a hard product, show the network is alive, and let marketing update it weekly without breaking it.
PRD snapshot
Goal
Relaunch the network’s main site on a new brand theme, then keep it current as the ecosystem grows.
Users
Developers, validators, token holders, press, and SKALE’s marketing team.
Success criteria
Live without downtime. Every section rebuilt. Marketing adds content through the CMS with no design work. The visual language works on web, social and at events.
Scope
IA, page design, 3D illustration, motion, Webflow build direction, launch collateral.
Non-goals
Protocol, wallet or dApp interfaces. Token economics content.
Constraints
Two months, a remote client, dense copy, and a live site that couldn’t go dark.
01 · 10 Apr 2022 · T−53 days
Brief to live site in about eight weeks
Situation
The first SKALE copy reached me on 10 Apr 2022. The new site was live on the production domain by 2 Jun 2022.
What made it hard
A new visual world and every top-level page at once. Design-then-build would have blown the deadline.
Decision
Design and build in parallel, page by page, instead of shipping the homepage and reskinning later. The Webflow project was created on 17 Apr, a week in, and the developer built each page as soon as its Figma frames were ready. Two rounds of Figma-comment revisions, then hand-off.
Outcome
On time. The cost was early rework: one desktop build landed before I’d sent fonts or responsive frames, so I started handing over a type and asset kit before each batch.
02 · Apr–May 2022 · before launch
Making a technical product approachable without hiding the substance
Decision
Instead of the usual crypto gradients, a quiet black UI and simple type, with the personality in 3D objects: planets, a rocket, a telescope on Technology, a UFO on the 404.
I sketched in 2D, our 3D designer rendered, and I art-directed the motion. Objects stayed separate from the UI, so text stayed readable and the objects were reusable anywhere.
The telescope on Technology and the UFO on the 404. Objects sit beside the copy, never behind it.
Outcome
Six 4K 3D icons, hero motion, a 360° logo animation and a “SKALEverse” video. The same objects carried launch banners and ETHNYC booth signage, and were still on the homepage in 2025.
4K 3D icon 1 of 6
4K 3D icon 2 of 6
4K 3D icon 3 of 6
4K 3D icon 4 of 6
4K 3D icon 5 of 6
4K 3D icon 6 of 6
The six 4K brand icons, exported 30 May 2022.
Hero motion loop: planets and rocket
360° logo animation
Launch banners for five social platforms
ETHNYC booth signage
One set of objects across the hero, the logo, social and an event booth.
03 · Early Jun 2022 · T0
Switching a live network’s site over without a big-bang launch
Situation
The old site was linked from wallets and exchanges. The client wanted to see the new site on the real domain first, and caching made a clean cutover unreliable.
Decision
Serve the new build on a preview URL on the production domain (?new), then have the client redirect the root through their CDN once approved.
Root URL
Old site
Old site
New build, via CDN redirect
Preview · ?new
—
New build, client review
—
Two addresses on one domain. The dot marks the new build: reviewed on the preview address first, then moved to the root.
Outcome
The client reviewed on production, we fixed what they found (social buttons moved out of the mobile hero, the Security page retitled), and we switched over in early June 2022.
04 · Jul–Aug 2022 · T+2 months
Moving the blog archive from Ghost into Webflow
Situation
The blog still lived on Ghost, outside the new site and its look. My team took on the migration; the Ghost exports are dated July and August 2022.
What made it hard
Hundreds of posts had to land in a Webflow CMS collection on the new templates while marketing kept publishing.
Decision
Move the whole archive into Webflow CMS on the site’s components, rather than leave Ghost running separately.
Blog posts in the skale.space sitemap
539
734
Source: the Wayback Machine’s copies of sitemap.xml. Both counts come from the same Webflow project.
Outcome
By Jan 2023 the skale.space sitemap listed 539 blog posts; by Jan 2024, 734, all on the same Webflow project.
Blog listing page, 2023
Blog post page, 2023
The blog on the new templates (Wayback Machine, 2023).
05 · Dec 2022 · T+6 months
Launch done, but the site had no system
Situation
After launch came a stream of requests: ecosystem projects, case studies, site-wide banners, a staking section, sales one-pagers. By December 2022 the client was sending recordings of buttons that differed page to page, dropdowns too small to hit, and mobile nav bugs. Our project manager said it plainly: the site had practically no design system.
What made it hard
Every fix had been local and rushed, and developers edited in the same Figma file as the designs.
Decision
01
Component library
I built a Figma component library (buttons, nav and dropdowns, cards, CTAs) and rebuilt pages on it.
02
Inspect-only access
I moved developers to inspect-only access, at one developer’s own request, after edits kept landing in master components.
03
Content in the CMS
I pushed repeatable content into Webflow CMS collections so marketing could add entries without design work.
Figma component library: buttons, nav, dropdowns, cards
The Figma component library: buttons, nav and dropdowns, cards.
Before: a page before the component rebuild
After: the same page on the library
One page before and after the rebuild on the library.
Outcome
The ecosystem page grew to 142 CMS entries on the same components.
Also on request
SKALE sometimes handed us existing network-stat visualizations and asked us to redesign them. I redesigned those on request; the live Stats dashboard itself was a third-party embed, not ours.
Redesigned network-stat visualization, before and after
T+3.5 years · Jun 2022 → Nov 2025
The build outlived the contract
Piqo’s contract ended in December 2023. The same Webflow project, with its components and CMS collections, kept serving skale.space until at least November 2025, before SKALE replaced the site.
2022 → 2025, by month
2022
2023
2024
2025
Piqo contract · Apr 2022 – Dec 2023
The same Webflow project serving skale.space · Jun 2022 – at least Nov 2025
The build kept running almost two years after the contract ended. Source: Wayback Machine snapshots carrying the same Webflow site ID, Jun 2022 to Nov 2025.
Design decisions and system
Quiet black UI, loud 3D objects
Information architecture
Home
Technology
Network
Developers
Ecosystem
Blog
Community
About
Grants · 2023
Validators · 2023
Eight top-level pages at launch. Grants and Validators (dashed) were added in 2023 on the same components.
Visual language
A black canvas, a white geometric sans, and one accent blue for “Build on SKALE” moments. Colour comes only from the 3D objects.
Components
Nav and dropdowns, buttons, feature cards, stat tiles, a site-wide CTA banner, and CMS-driven ecosystem cards.
Motion
Only in the hero and the illustrations, never in the reading flow.
Edge cases
An on-brand 404, and hundreds of client-supplied logo formats normalised into one card size.
The “Build on SKALE” banner and the Community page, both built from the shared components.
Evidence
By the numbers
Every figure is stamped in launch time. T0 is 2 Jun 2022, the day the new site went live on the production domain.
Launch · T−53 → T0
T−53 → T0
10 Apr → 2 Jun 2022
~8 weeks
First copy to the new site live: 53 days, one tick per day.
T−53
T−46 · Webflow project
10 Apr · first copy
2 Jun · live, T0
Source · Chat archive timestamps
T−46
17 Apr 2022
17 Apr 2022
Webflow project created, one week in. The date is written into the project’s own ID.
data-wf-site
625c
…d654
Leading hex
625c… → 17 Apr 2022 · T−46
Source · Webflow site ID in archived HTML
T−3
30 May 2022
6
4K 3D brand icons, exported three days before launch.
4k icons skale COLOR
Name
Kind
Date
1.png
PNG · 4K
30 May 2022
2.png
PNG · 4K
30 May 2022
3.png
PNG · 4K
30 May 2022
4.png
PNG · 4K
30 May 2022
5.png
PNG · 4K
30 May 2022
6.png
PNG · 4K
30 May 2022
Source · Mac files, 30 May 2022
T0
2 Jun 2022
5
Social platforms with launch banners, all from the same 3D objects.
5 platforms · banners 01–05
Source · Mac files, 2 Jun 2022
After launch · T+6 months → T+3.5 years
T+6 months
Dec 2022
3
Sales one-pagers, the first collateral built on the new look after launch.
Source · Mac files, Dec 2022
T+7 → T+18 mo
2023
142
Ecosystem entries on the CMS-driven ecosystem page, all on the same card component.
CMS · Ecosystem
142 items
Ecosystem entry 001
Published
Ecosystem entry 002
Published
Ecosystem entry 003
Published
+ 139 more, same card
Source · Wayback /ecosystem, 2023
T0 → T+3.5 yrs
Jun 2022 → Nov 2025
3.5+ years
The same Webflow project served skale.space from launch to at least Nov 2025, well past the end of the contract.
Wayback snapshot
data-wf-site
Jun 2022
625c…d654
new site live
Jan 2023
″
Dec 2023
Piqo contract ends
Jun 2024
″
Nov 2025
″
latest snapshot on this ID
Source · Wayback snapshots, same site ID
We had no analytics access. Next time I’d measure the time to publish an entry before and after the CMS work, and CTA click-through.
What I learned
System
Build the system before the second page, not after the fiftieth.
Page by page got us live fast; six months later we paid in inconsistent buttons. Today I’d lock a small component set in week one, even under deadline.
Access
Agree on access and ownership early.
Developers editing master components was a process problem, not a people problem.
Analytics
Ask for analytics on day one.
I can show what shipped and how long it lasted, not what it changed.