Work · Lumen Bio
Lumen Bio — a visual identity for the second decade.
A Series-B biotech needed a brand that signaled both scientific rigor and human warmth — without the usual genomics-stock-photo cliché.
- Client
- Lumen Bio
- Sector
- Biotech · Series B
- Scope
- Brand · Website · Investor deck
- Year
- Q1 — Q3 2025
- Awards
- Brand New (feature) · 2025
The brief
Lumen was founded in 2019 by two researchers from Stanford. Five years and 320 employees later, the original identity — designed in a single weekend by a co-founder — was holding the company back. The brief: keep what's good (warmth, accessibility) but signal the company's maturity as it prepared for IPO.
Our approach
We started with three rounds of stakeholder interviews — founders, scientists, sales leaders, recent hires. Two patterns emerged: everyone described the work as "patient, careful, slow"; nobody felt the existing brand reflected that.
From there, we developed three independent visual directions, presented all three to the client without recommendations, and let them argue. The winning direction — quiet, serif-led, generous whitespace — was the one nobody on our team had bet on.
— Color and typography system
Logo system
The wordmark is a custom adaptation of Roslindale by David Jonathan Ross — slightly compressed, with a custom "L" that doubles as a graphic device across collateral. We built three formal lockups and a system for non-Latin script variants.
In motion
The mark animates as a slow reveal — six seconds, single ease. We designed it specifically for use in scientific presentations, where the audience already has a lot to process.
Marketing site
A full redesign of lumen.bio, built with a custom design system. The team can now ship new pages without engineering involvement — and they have, weekly, since launch.
"Vertex understood our brand better than we did. Twelve months later, we still reach for their guidelines for every decision we make."
Results
- Brand recall up 18% in unaided awareness studies (Q3 2025)
- Marketing site conversion (signup) up 3.2× post-launch
- 340% increase in inbound press inquiries
- Brand featured in Brand New, It's Nice That, Design Week
Credits
Studio Vertex
- Creative direction · Noa Singh
- Brand lead · Theo Fischer
- Designer · Lina Kowalski
- Engineering · Ryo Bennett
Client side
- CMO · Amira Saleh
- Co-founder · Dr. Kenji Tanaka
- Head of growth · Reyna Pereira