Competi
Building a prediction ecosystem that feels like a game you play with friends — not a trading platform.
My Role
End-to-End Designer
Brand · Motion · Product · Deck
Impact
$500K raised
on the back of the deck
What did I do?
A prediction market that feels like a Friday night.
Competi is a social prediction platform built inside Discord and Telegram. Users place bets on outcomes with friends, get cards when they do, and compete inside communities they already live in.
The goal wasn't to build another prediction market. It was to make prediction markets feel like something you'd do on a Friday night with your server.
My role covered everything: brand identity, social assets, in-app card design, and the investor deck that helped the founders close their initial $500K round.
Two words: fighting and friendly.
The Brief
Two words from the client: fighting and friendly.
The brand needed to live natively inside Discord and Telegram — which meant icon-size legibility, clan-energy aesthetics, and zero fintech vibes.
Exploration
The first round went deep on competitive symbols — sword through shield, variations in form, proportions, flag elements. Eight variations per round, iterated on client feedback. The handle wasn't reading right. The silhouette needed to hold at 32px.
Three colour directions ran in parallel. Each got its own full variation set — 8 logos per palette, tested on both light and dark backgrounds.
Blue
Trust, loyalty
Gold
Warmth, premium
Purple
Magic, luxury
Then the brief pushed further. Playing cards, crossed daggers, planted flags, skull swords, tic-tac-toe grids, helmet crests, “Poly Rivals” wordmark treatments — the exploration cast wide on purpose.
The Decision
The client chose the fist.
Crown on top. Coin in the grip. Chunky, illustrative, instantly readable. It's the one mark that answered both words at once — the fist is fighting, the crown is earned, the coin is the bet. It looks like something you'd put on a Discord sticker pack, which is exactly where it was going next.
From a 32px mark to a sticker pack.
Not a receipt. A flex.
The Problem
When a user places a bet on Competi, something needs to appear in the Discord channel. Not just a notification — a moment. Something that makes other people in the server react, feel the stakes, maybe place their own bet.
The card had to carry real information (event, pick, wager, odds, how many others bet the same) while feeling like a collectible, not a receipt.
The System
Four tiers. One character. The skeleton bookie in a suit — present across every tier, his rendering style and colour shifting with the card's rank. Same data structure throughout; the tier changes what it feels like to hold.
Bronze
Copper border, warm tones. Your first bet. Accessible, entry-level energy.
Silver
Greyscale rendering, clean border. The card looks sharper but cooler. Mid-tier seriousness.
Gold
Full yellow rendering, bold border. The character pops. High-wager energy — $15 feels bigger here.
Diamond
Purple, crown on the character, rotated social-proof label on the side. Only 2 players made this bet. Rare by design.
The Design Decisions
The skeleton bookie isn't arbitrary — it's a character that holds the brand's “fighting + friendly” tension perfectly. Skeletons read as edgy and cool in gaming culture, but a skeleton in a suit taking notes is immediately funny and charming. He's the house. He's always watching. But he's also kind of a dork.
The social-proof badge — “X Players Made This Bet” — is live and dynamic. The number populates from actual bet data, so the same UI element carries completely different emotional weight depending on context. A high number validates your pick. A low number makes you feel rare. Same component, opposite effect.
Wager and odds are the largest text elements after the matchup. Information hierarchy follows what a bettor actually cares about, in order: who's playing → who I picked → how much I put in → what the odds are.
What It Does in the Wild
When this card drops in a Discord channel, it's not a bot message. It's a flex. The tier signals how serious you are. The character gives it personality. The data gives others enough context to respond — agree, disagree, counter-bet.
It turns a transaction into a social object.
Inside the product.
The artefact that closed the round.
Brand, product, and opportunity — the deck pulled the whole story together for the room. It became the primary artefact the founders carried into their raise.
Some things stay in the room.
For legal and confidentiality reasons the deck can't be shared publicly. What I can share is the outcome — it was the primary artefact the founders used to close their initial $500K round.
The deck I built was the primary artefact the founders used to close their initial round.
A brand that started with two words — fighting, friendly — became a visual system that scaled from a 32px Discord icon to a pitch deck closing half a million dollars.