Axiom

What does it look like when you zoom into a living cell and find a brand inside it? Axiom.

Axiom is an AI-powered drug discovery platform that predicts drug toxicity before a compound ever reaches a patient. We built their entire visual world around a creative direction we called "Biology Illuminated."

The direction started with Axiom's own science. Their platform runs drugs through human cell cultures and generates real cellular imagery from those experiments. We took that imagery, the actual visual output of the research, and made it the foundation of the brand. Macro-scale cellular photography rendered with an iridescent quality that celebrates the strange, breathtaking cosmos already happening inside us.

A central motif, the orb, holds the world together. It shifts between organic biology and precise technology depending on context, appearing as a logo variant, a hero element on the homepage, and a visual anchor across every surface. The orb is built from the same cellular imagery that defines the brand, compressed into a single form that reads as both scientific and alive.

The typography pairs GT Walsheim, a clean geometric sans-serif, with Atlas Typewriter, a monospaced face built for scientific data. The combination gives Axiom two registers: one that speaks with warmth and clarity to a general audience, and one that holds its own inside dense research environments where precision matters more than personality.

The homepage opens with the orb and a five-word mission statement: "Ending unexpected drug toxicity." Below it: a single positioning sentence and two entry points into the platform. The page was designed to communicate what Axiom does within seconds of landing, for pharmaceutical researchers who are skeptical of AI and accustomed to cluttered, clinical interfaces.

Axiom's science pages had to carry real weight. The drug discovery pipeline visualization maps the stages from target identification through clinical trial, showing exactly where Axiom's AI enters the process. The toxicity risk curve plots human exposure against predicted risk, with clinical prediction, toxic exposure, and therapeutic exposure clearly delineated. These pages needed to be legible to a scientist evaluating the platform and to an investor evaluating the company, without flattening the data for either audience.

The reasoning agent is the core of Axiom's product. A scientist types a question, and the platform synthesizes safety assessments by comparing compounds across bioactivity, necrosis, and viability metrics. The interface presents findings in an article-like format with inline data visualizations, so the AI's reasoning is transparent and verifiable at every step. We designed this experience to feel as considered as the brand world around it.

The data exploration layer is where Axiom's scientists spend most of their time; fluorescence microscopy images from cell culture experiments are organized by toxicity mechanism, with each view labeled by stain type and biological marker. The interface needed to present dense, specialized imagery in a way that supports rapid comparison without sacrificing the visual integrity of the source material.

We designed a complete atomic component library for Axiom's product, built in Figma and handed off ready for development. Buttons, controls, dividers, dropdowns, navigation, search, tables, and patterns, each with full variant matrices covering size, state, and color. The system was designed desktop-first for scientists who spend their days inside dense data environments.

The product navigation uses a persistent sidebar for collection-level browsing and a top nav for search and filtering. Data exploration tables display compound-level metrics across clinical risk categories, with each row carrying enough information for a researcher to make a preliminary assessment without clicking through. The components were built to handle Axiom's data density without visual compromise.

The full brand system spans typography, color, gradients, components, logo variants, mockup applications, generated imagery, and social templates. Every element traces back to the same cellular source material, so the system holds together whether it appears on a conference screen, a social post, or a product interface. The brand world and the product world share the same DNA.

The presentation system carries the brand into pitch meetings, board decks, and conference talks. Slides move between full-bleed cellular imagery, clean data layouts, and product screenshots, with the orb-and-gradient system tying each frame to the larger identity. The deck was designed so that anyone on Axiom's team can build a presentation that feels on-brand without needing design support for every slide.

The publications section separates scientific papers from blog content, each with its own layout. Blog posts open with full-bleed cellular imagery that doubles as the card thumbnail in the index view. The system was built on Sanity CMS so Axiom's team can publish independently, with the visual language holding steady regardless of who's writing or what the subject is.

The brand extends into physical and environmental applications. Conference booth design, screen graphics, and presentation materials all draw from the same cellular visual library, so Axiom's presence at industry events feels like a continuation of the digital experience rather than a separate effort.

Little Plains led brand strategy, positioning, identity, generative imagery, product UI design and full component system, copywriting, site design and development, presentation design, and conference materials. Grateful to Brandon and the Axiom team for trusting us across everything.