It seems as if everyone is talking about the metaverse and how it will change everything from finance and advertising to celebrity culture and design. As a freelance creator we naturally want to think about the future of our independent brands. 

As creatives in the field, we know how much thought and creativity goes into developing a brand identity from typeface and logos to colour schemes and finishes. Now that the metaverse is in talks, we need to start thinking about the sensory elements that can be drawn from brand identities. 

Extended Reality (ER) is a blend of AR and MR (Mixed Reality) and this is essentially what sits at the core of the metaverse, defining the immersive experience it brings to users. Not yet a fully fledged creation, the metaverse is seeking to immerse the viewer as pleasurably and sustainably as cinema and gaming can but via a social media type format. Facebook and Google are setting out to master how VR can transport people to another time and place convincingly – without making them feel a bit queasy in the process. The primary concern is solving the movement problem, as currently movement within VR is difficult to achieve from one’s living room. The second concern is tricking the senses into feeling what they’re seeing. It’s the latter that is particularly interesting for advertisers.

Another barrier the metaverse is seeking to overcome is realistic interaction within the digital world. The human fingertip can detect a 0.4mm difference in surface area. Our hands are incredibly sensitive and play a vital role in how we interact and perceive the world. Brands such as TactGlove are developing gloves that will allow people to have realistic interactions with virtual objects, providing haptic feedback that mimics the real world. It’s through this level of tech advancement users will soon be able to shake hands with one another in their virtual meetings, or pet a cat in a video game and feel the natural resistance, force, movement and texture as they do it.

Now the barriers of touch are being overcome in tech, we must question what effect that has on our branding; what experiences can we, as creatives, deliver? As a music performer, how does this affect a live stream? As graphic designs, how does this affect 3D design and typography? There are many questions to consider. Perhaps different colours in our branding will incite different emotions?