Our ambition is to design for trust in carbon dioxide removal (CDR)—making data traceable, transparent and understandable. Solving the climate crisis requires trust built on more than good intentions and design is central to this.
In this post, I’ll explore the role of design in scaling carbon removal, the brand we’ve created, what makes design at Isometric unique, and how designers can make the greatest impact. From the way we visualize data to the typography we use, design is fundamental to making complex information accessible and meaningful—ensuring that trust isn't just promised, but earned.
Designing a brand for trust
Trust isn’t just a lofty principle we discuss, it’s something we intentionally design and build for. That foundation starts with our brand identity—the visual and verbal representation of Isometric’s values.
To create our brand identity, we collaborated with The Office of Ordinary Things, who internalized Isometric’s mission and created a brand identity that balances scientific precision with clarity and warmth. (If you're looking for a studio who cares deeply about the climate crisis and has the chops to deliver a truly unique identity to underpin your mission, reach out to Jonny at TOOOT.)
The Isometric logo
Our logo is both a monogram and a representation of rigorous measurement. The Isometric logo encapsulates precision: the central ‘I’ represents a data point with quantified uncertainty bounds, while the additional measurement marks indicate the dimensions of the wider measurements we consider.
Isometric Pink (aka Iso-blush / pink-40) is an intentional departure from the default green and blue palettes dominating the climate space. The soft pink contrasts with black and grayscale iconography to strike the perfect balance between precision, seriousness and human warmth.
Our typeface—a customized version of Repro by the incredible type studio ABC Dinamo—embodies clarity, precision and modernity. Its clean lines and well-defined letterforms enhance legibility, whether in marketing materials or data-heavy user interfaces.
Isometric Pathway Icons
Earning trust through product design
A brand can set expectations, but trust is earned through products that truly solve problems. Our brand identity establishes transparency and rigor as core principles and our product design ensures those principles hold up in practice.
When the product you’re buying isn’t something physical, trust takes on an entirely new meaning. In CDR, robust scientific data is the foundation on which trust is built. Designers at Isometric obsess over ways to connect buyers of CDR to the verified removals they are purchasing.
Take, for example, our credit issuance and delivery pages. Traditional methods of sharing data often involve PDFs linked to other PDFs—or, at best, downloadable CSV files filled with complex formulas and redacted figures. Isometric could have followed this convention. Instead, we looked at the data and asked ourselves:
What if users could progressively explore data at increasing levels of granularity?
What if they could view sources directly in the context of the numbers?
Designing this way forced us to understand the underlying data model and helped mould it so that the information could be organised in a better way for users. Clarifying which data relates to sequestration, activity, counterfactuals and losses was a prerequisite for guiding users through the breakdown of a removal in a meaningful way.
Calculation view
Frequently sharing prototypes of our calculation view with suppliers and buyers helped to validate our approach ideas before building. Their feedback gave us conviction in our direction—especially when we started to hear things like: “We’ve never seen our data presented this way before; it’s actually organized.”
Over time, the calculation view has evolved to incorporate more powerful expressions, list data and source references. Today, suppliers tell us that the issuance page and calculation view have become their go-to destination when speaking with prospective buyers who want to learn more about their process and credits.
Designing on a foundation of robust data and being mindful of our users’ needs has allowed us to create an interface that transitions from high-level to granular detail, helping users understand the data, sources and measurement.
How designers have impact at Isometric
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs
At Isometric, designers aren’t just here to “make things look pretty.” Aesthetic quality is table stakes (the baseline)—it’s important for consistency and credibility—but true impact comes from solving real-world problems at pace—a necessity for anyone working in climate.
To achieve this, designers at Isometric:
Stay close to suppliers and buyers
There’s no substitute for collaborating with the people you’re designing for. Our weekly calls keep us grounded in real-world needs, helping us build conviction faster.
Go deep into the science
Working alongside some of the world’s leading CDR scientists, we ask constant questions that sharpen our understanding. This is essential to developing a coherent understanding of measurement, data requirements and alignment with our protocols.
Hold strong opinions, loosely
CDR is a fast-moving field. Being bold enough to propose unconventional solutions while remaining humble enough to pivot quickly is key. Weak opinions, strongly held, slow us down—strong opinions, loosely held, make us adaptable.
What makes design at Isometric unique
The principles above could apply to any design team. But designing for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) comes with a set of unique challenges and opportunities that require a different approach.
Designing for an emerging industry
CDR is still in its early stages. Unlike established industries with well-defined patterns and user expectations, we’re building products and interfaces for a rapidly developing sector. This means we can’t rely on best practices—we have to invent them.
Designers at Isometric operate in a space where there are few precedents, requiring creativity, adaptability and a willingness to question assumptions.
Balancing scientific rigor with usability
Carbon removal involves robust scientific methodologies, precise measurements and deep technical data. The challenge is not just making this information available, but making it understandable, actionable and trustworthy for a diverse audience—including buyers, suppliers, policymakers and the public. We need to ensure that our interfaces convey precision without overwhelming users with complexity.
Trust isn’t a luxury. It’s everything
In many industries, trust is a competitive advantage. In CDR, trust is the foundation.
Buyers must be confident that the CDR they pay for is accurately measured and independently verified. Suppliers need to be able to trust that the data is robust and aligned with the most up-to-date science. Unlike other fields where user engagement might be the primary goal, our design work is about credibility and integrity.
Join us
We’re currently hiring for a Head of Design—a hands-on role from day one, with a strategic eye on the horizon. If you’re ready to take on the design challenge of a lifetime—to work on something that truly matters—we’d love to hear from you.
