TheLudicCreative.xyz – eNom / Open SRS (United States)
Creative expression is known to relieve stress and improve mental health and well-being. However, it’s common for adults who grew up with coloring books and music classes to lose touch with their creative sides. It’s never too late to jump back into an artistic hobby or try out a new one, whether that means knitting a scarf, jamming on the guitar, or doodling in a spare notebook. Sharing what you make online can inspire others and connect you to other like-minded individuals outside of your usual circle. That’s exactly what this week’s #WebsiteWednesday did with her website TheLudicCreative.xyz.
TheLudicCreative.xyz is the online portfolio of San Francisco artist and healthcare professional Tara L. Chen. As a child, Tara was an avid student of painting, drawing, and Chinese calligraphy. She temporarily set her artistic abilities aside in pursuit of her career as a clinical pharmacist in hematology and oncology. Tara advanced to become the associate director for a pharmaceutical company working on treating many forms of cancer. After graduate school, Tara reconnected with her creative talent and rediscovered her passion for abstract acrylic painting.
Tara created TheLudicCreative.xyz to share her new creative outlet with the rest of the world. The joy Tara gets from art is evident with the .xyz domain name she chose. As the website homepage defines, “ludic” means “showing spontaneous and undirected playfulness.” Her domain name serves as a wonderful representation of her abstract artwork.
The design of TheLudicCreative.xyz is a great example of how to showcase your artwork online. The homepage features a fullscreen image of her painting in a slideshow, so the viewer gets to experience a number of her works immediately. Once you enter the website, you’re taken to her Gallery page, where you’re able to see the entirety of her work.
When you click on an image on the Gallery page, you’re able to see more photographs of each painting, along with a title and description. Through the description, you’re able to learn more about Tara and her inspiration for her work. One favorite of ours is a dreamy blue and yellow piece entitled Summer on Cape Cod. In its description, Tara describes fond memories she has growing up going to the vacation spot. Tara says that when she looks at the painting, it is “so evocative of our summers on the cape that I could almost smell the salt in the air.”
Go to TheLudicCreative.xyz to enjoy more of Tara’s works and to gain inspiration from a polished art website. Follow Tara and her work on Instagram with @TheLudicCreative to stay up-to-date with her latest work.
One of the key steps in establishing your brand is bringing it online with a memorable website. It’s important to choose a name that will appeal to potential customers and users while also presenting your brand in the best light. This week’s #WebsiteWednesday will introduce you to three .xyz adopters who established brands for their typography services with expertly branded domain names: Undercase.xyz, FutureFonts.xyz, TypeSpecimens.xyz. Each one utilizes a unique strategy to establish a creative brand, and can help inspire you when creating your new website.
Undercase.xyz – GoDaddy customer (United States)
Sharing the story of your brand helps you make a more memorable and emotional connection with your target audience. Phaedra Charles and Flavia Zimbardi, the founders of font design and distribution service Undercase.xyz, use this storytelling marketing strategy immediately on their homepage. The first thing you’ll learn from Undercase.xyz is about the brand’s creation, when Phaedra and Flavia met at the Type@Cooper Extended Program and began their partnership. They also introduce themselves and their impressive past experience. Phaedra is a former partner at a boutique typographic and illustration studio. Flavia has collaborated with renowned foundries like Frere-Jones, Commercial Type, and AdobeFonts, and was the first Brazilian woman to have a typeface awarded by the Type Directors Club in 2018.
After using the homepage to make a deeper connection with the audience, Undercase.xyz uses clear call-to-action buttons to note where to purchase or download custom fonts. The site also cleverly uses a black and white color scheme to reinforce the “typeface” theme of the brand. Flavia and Phaedra complete their branding with a very memorable and perfect name for their industry, Undercase.xyz.
FutureFonts.xyz – eNom/Open SRS customer (United States)
FutureFonts.xyz, as you may be able to tell from their descriptive brand name, is a forward-thinking font foundry. They specialize in fresh fonts that are new to the market. Their modern marketing approach can be seen in their use of a subdomain, Hypertext.FutureFonts.xyz, to showcase their separate offering of special “hypertext” fonts. They created these fonts utilizing pop culture references as a celebration of font culture. This allows them to use their well-branded domain name to launch a new product category and create a dedicated page for it. Using their domain this way also makes the URL easy to remember, so customers can easily navigate to the hypertext offerings FutureFonts.xyz has.
The FutureFonts.xyz website itself employs a very modern and bold look, which immediately grabs site visitors’ attention. They feature a host of font contributors from around the world, along with a photo, location, and taste of each one’s personal style on the Foundries page. FutureFonts.xyz also features journal posts with updates from the members of their font foundry service. This touch of personalization is a great way to get customers to engage with the FutureFonts.xyz website regularly.
TypeSpecimens.xyz – GoDaddy customer (United Kingdom)
Mark Boulton is a design director, writer, and speaker who uses his website, TypeSpecimens.xyz, to curate type specimens and journal his thoughts on them. Mark has labeled the TypeSpecimens.xyz service as a “research & design project, a publication, and a community resource.” The website provides a list of type specimens, which are created by font designers as tools to help other designers choose fonts and make stylistic choices. Mark then draws on his experience working with clients like Conde Nast, Al Jazeera, and ESPN to analyze these specimens. In his posts, Mark investigates the specimens’ usefulness as marketing tools and muses on their effect on “type culture.” This unique angle helps Mark make his service stand out by offering a new perspective on the industry.
Mark shares most of his thoughts on these specimens and their cultural impact in his journal, and also provides a link to sign up for the TypeSpecimens.xyz newsletter featuring “specimens, interviews, blog posts and more.” The keyword TypeSpecimens.xyz domain exactly matches Mark’s niche service as well. Securing a domain name that exactly matches your product as Mark did helps make your URL more memorable.
These three typographers show that incorporating personal style, helpful features, and creative use of your domain name are all ways to differentiate your unique service in a large industry. When you start with a branded .xyz domain, as these entrepreneurs did, you make it easier to promote your website and have potential customers remember it. A memorable and short domain also gives your service an extra air of professionalism that can help attract clients.
FirstEdition.xyz – Gandi customer (United States)
Blockchain-based services continue to give us some of the most exciting new developments we’ve had in technology. Every day we discover new applications. Uses of blockchain tech range from stock options trading and smart wallet naming to strong email encryption and event participation tracking. You can even link your .xyz domain to your Ethereum wallet and use it as a custom wallet address. Blockchain tech is popping up in all kinds of industries, as well. This week’s #WebsiteWednesday shows that the art world is the latest to join the trend with FirstEdition.xyz.
FirstEdition.xyz is an online gallery of rare blockchain-based digital art. Created earlier this year, the gallery exists entirely on the blockchain itself. Cryptocurrency art enthusiasts in Williamsburg, Brooklyn manage the gallery and cultivate its audience. Creators of the works in FirstEdition.xyz’s gallery use nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to make their art. An NFT is a special kind of token on the blockchain that represents something unique. Art from the FirstEdition.xyz gallery is purchasable through any Ethereum-based marketplace that supports ERC-721, the technical standard for NFTs. The entire artistic process for creators of the works on FirstEdition.xyz, from creation to sale, happens on the blockchain.
The gallery itself is named after its specialty of featuring many rare “first edition” works. FirstEdition.xyz provides a commission to the artist of any work sold from their collection. In addition to the FirstEdition.xyz site, the gallery promotes its collection to art fans and potential buyers through social media. They include the FirstEdition.xyz domain name right in their Twitter name so they are promoting the gallery with every post and reply they make. This is a smart tactic, as it helps their website reach more potential site visitors than if they only featured the link in their social media bio. They also send out a newsletter branded with their FirstEdition.xyz domain which features rare works, virtual galleries, creator tokens, and more.
The layout of the website resembles a real-life art gallery, embracing minimalist design to keep the focus on the art featured. FirstEdition.xyz displays each work along with the artist’s name, the name of the work, and an online handle for the artist. Buyers can sort the works to view only rare pieces as well if they want to purchase something especially unique.
Creativity and innovation are two traits that are abundant in the .xyz community. FirstEdition.xyz shows both by pushing the capabilities of blockchain tech-forward. Their blockchain-compatible .xyz domain lets them showcase their tech knowledge on a memorable, perfectly branded website. Join FirstEdition.xyz and the many blockchain fans using .xyz domains by registering your own for your latest project or follow our guide to use it as a custom name for your crypto wallet.
Today marks the 6th anniversary of .xyz’s launch. We’ve had an amazing journey so far, all thanks to you, the .xyz community. We would not have come this far without you. For six years and counting, all you innovators, creatives, entrepreneurs, and leading startups have chosen .xyz. You are our inspiration. Here are a few of our team’s favorites:
The .xyz community gives us many opportunities to share success stories. We have been tracking the startups launched by those who use XYZ Registry domains, cheering along these past 12 months as they secured more than $75 million for their companies. They have been featured in the news on TechCrunch, Forbes, The Verge, CNET, and Boston Globe. We had the chance to feature 52 new and innovative .xyz case studies at length through our #WebsiteWednesday series, published each week. In the past 12 months alone we’ve discovered and shared .xyz end users over 600 times. To this hard-working and incredibly fascinating .xyz community, thank you for all of the opportunities to sing your praises.
Thanks to our partners and their customers across the globe, worldwide adoption has kept .xyz as the most popular new domain name by usage. We have seen strong adoption in major emerging internet markets like Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. Adoption in countries with massive internet audiences like India, the United States, China, Japan, Australia, and Brazil, continues to grow.
We would not be where we are without the support and enthusiasm of our registrar partners. They have made it possible around the world for anyone to find their own .xyz. We are grateful to partners like GoDaddy, Namecheap, Dynadot, and Uniregistry, among many others, for the opportunity to spread the message that .xyz truly is for everyone, everywhere. We have you, our global .xyz community, to thank for giving us hope for a bright future full of innovation.
Engine.xyz – GoDaddy customer (United States)
The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic continues to have dramatic effects on daily life. Due to the worldwide scale of the situation, global markets, supply chains, and even entire industries are experiencing major upheaval. We’re proud to see .xyz community members jumping to action, like COVID-19 tracking system Cov19.xyz. You’ll find another great example of this problem-solving spirit in the tough tech companies supported by today’s #WebsiteWednesday: Engine.xyz.
Since its founding in 2016, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s “tough tech incubator” The Engine has provided funding, lab space, equipment, and mentorship to tough tech startups working to build world-changing technology. The Engine’s online home is Engine.xyz, and we published a feature on the site back when it first came online. In the years since its launch, Engine.xyz has used its $175 million in funding to invest in leading tough tech startups. Engine.xyz CEO Katie Rae says MIT founded Engine.xyz with the goal of “solving the world’s greatest problems with breakthrough technologies.”
The companies that Engine.xyz supports in their incubator are proving that mission by turning their efforts toward addressing COVID-19. One example is Engine resident E25Bio, a biotech and life sciences company focused on rapid and accurate diagnosis of infectious diseases. The company has redirected its entire team’s efforts to create a fast and accurate COVID-19 test. Testing is one of the most critical challenges in containing the spread of COVID-19. E25Bio’s solution to this problem is to create a paper strip test, which they say is an affordable solution that can be scaled for production in mass quantities. The test is currently undergoing human testing, and Boston Globe and Psychology Today recently reported on E25Bio’s work in quickly developing the test.
Another Engine.xyz resident taking COVID-19 head-on is Biobot Analytics. The company uses data analysis to improve wastewater infrastructure and public health, and says they are convening 100 wastewater facilities to track the spread of COVID-19 through the water system. Biobot Analytics co-founder Dr. Mariana Matus recently detailed this testing process on CNBC’s Squawk Alley program. In the interview, she explains that the wastewater data they are collecting represents about 10% of the U.S. population and will help officials decide where to deploy resources to slow the spread of the virus.
Overcoming obstacles is a talent of many members of the .xyz community. Engine.xyz’s work on COVID-19 projects shows that no challenge is too great for our community of end users to take on. An innovative spirit can overcome even the toughest problems, and we’re proud to see Engine.xyz displaying that spirit and making .xyz users around the world proud.
