Menthol Protocol
Project Type
Web
Role
Senior Designer — 3D Illustration, Brand, Website, Platform UI, Marketing Visuals
Deliverables
Cinema 4D, Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud
Introduction
Menthol Protocol is a Web3 platform that offsets carbon emissions through tokenised carbon credits. Over 13 months as Senior Designer, the work spanned a 3D-led visual identity, marketing website, protocol platform UI, and an ongoing library of marketing and social visuals — built around the central problem that carbon offsetting is invisible, and invisible things are hard to trust.
Carbon offsetting suffers from a double invisibility. The damage is invisible. The repair is invisible. Photography cannot solve this — you cannot photograph the absence of a tonne of CO₂. 3D could.
The Brief
Menthol Protocol is a DeFi platform that tokenises carbon credits, letting users and institutions offset emissions onchain — verifiable, immutable, and auditable in ways that the existing voluntary carbon market is not. The audience is sceptical twice over: sceptical of greenwashing, and sceptical of crypto hype. Earning their trust meant designing something that felt unlike either. The visual identity had to make an intangible process — the retirement of a carbon credit, the measurement of an avoided emission — feel real and weighty enough to act on.
Menthol Protocol — visual identity rooted in atmosphere and environment.
3D Illustration
The decision to lead with 3D illustration rather than photography, flat design, or data visualisation came from the problem itself. Photography of forests and smokestacks already exists, and it carries all the baggage of decades of environmental marketing. Flat design would have abstracted the stakes into something manageable and forgettable. 3D could do something neither could: build a physical world that doesn't exist, that makes visible what the protocol is actually working on. The renders place industrial forms and natural ones in deliberate proximity — fog settling over a landscape, crystalline structures emerging from soil, atmospheric light over carbon-heavy terrain. The tension is the point. The discomfort is information. Photorealism was pushed toward the atmospheric rather than the clinical, giving the imagery emotional weight rather than scientific detachment. After 13 months, the 3D library became the brand's most distinctive asset — the thing no other Web3 project was producing.
Environmental tension — industry and nature, rendered in 3D.
3D illustration series — atmosphere and carbon.
Illustration library — brand visuals and campaign assets.
Website
The marketing website was structured to onboard two distinct users without making either feel secondary: DeFi-native token holders who understand the mechanics and want to act, and climate-focused institutions unfamiliar with Web3 who need to understand the protocol before they can trust it. The site leads with the environmental mission — not the mechanics — and the 3D illustrations anchor every long-scroll section, keeping the experience grounded in the physical world the protocol is working to protect. The language stays close to the earth: atmosphere, offset, retire, protect. No yield farming. No liquidity pools. The product vocabulary was rebuilt from the ground up to serve the audience it was actually designed for.
Platform UI
The protocol platform gives users visibility into their carbon offset positions, token staking, and credit retirement. The UI is dark-mode throughout — a decision that kept the atmospheric 3D renders readable and immersive rather than decorative. Key actions (offset, stake, retire) are surfaced prominently. The language of the interface mirrors the language of the brand: direct, grounded, no jargon that doesn't need to be there.
Menthol Protocol Explainer Animation
Platform UI — offsetting, staking, and credit retirement screens.
Marketing & Social
The social and marketing visual system extended the 3D illustration library into campaign formats — token launch announcements, protocol updates, community milestones, and environmental awareness content. Each piece maintained the atmospheric 3D language while adapting to the square and portrait ratios of social media. After 13 months, the feed looked unlike anything else in the Web3 space: no charts, no price candles, no laser eyes. Just atmosphere, rendered in 3D, for a protocol that chose to take the problem seriously.
Social and marketing visuals.
Menthol Protocol — making carbon offsetting visible.
