This month, we wrapped up the Sandbox Fellowship with a showcase of powerful social impact projects, partnered on market research in Dubai’s food space, and advanced new systems in both crypto wealth management and government design. Our newsletter also spotlights our climate finance work across the Middle East and highlights a menstrual health initiative responding to Pakistan’s flooding crisis. Let’s dive in! 🚀

🗓️ This Month at Ideate

• Researching Viral Food Trends: We’ve just completed an exciting, month-long market research project with a Dubai-based guilt-free ice cream brand. Our team conducted in-depth competitor analysis and developed key personas to understand market dynamics and viral trends in the UAE’s highly competitive food and dessert landscape. This project gave us a chance to apply UX research skills in a fresh context as we turned to platforms like Reddit, TikTok, and Instagram for social media listening to explore how user-generated content can add to a brand’s visibility.

• Designing the Future of Crypto Wealth: We’re building the new website for BlockBytes Capital, a cryptocurrency wealth management firm that helps clients grow and protect their assets with data-driven strategies. Developed in Webflow, the site combines clean, professional design with subtle animations, CMS-driven content, and interactive sections. The result aims to balance trust and engagement, with a modern edge that reflects BlockBytes’ expertise in the evolving crypto space.

• Sandbox Fellowship 2025 Comes to a Close: We’ve just wrapped up the 2025 Sandbox Fellowship, which culminated in a special episode of our Dissecting Design series. The fellows showcased their impactful projects: one focused on female sexual health, another explored Pakistan’s rich mythology and the conservation of endangered animals, and the third was a community-led stray care initiative. Each project highlighted the fellows' dedication to creating social impact through design and research. The full session is now available to watch on our YouTube channel.

• Building Pakistan’s Digital Design System: Our UX Design Lead, Masna bin Umeed, presented an open-source design system he led with Code for Pakistan to make government digital services more citizen-centric. The system draws on research into Pakistani identity and global best practices, features right-to-left and local language support, and provides standardized components for accessibility and consistency. Branded as Digital Design Nizam, literally translating to “digital design system,” it now serves as a reference site and toolkit government departments can use to root their digital experiences in local needs. Explore the project here.

🔎 Project Spotlight 

Designing for Climate Finance in Emerging Markets

We partnered with a new climate equity fund operating across the UAE, Pakistan, and the broader Middle Eastern region to create a human-centered brand and digital experience. The fund required more than just a logo—it needed a visual and digital identity that could communicate its mission of climate equity while connecting with both institutional partners and local stakeholders.

Through collaborative workshops and stakeholder engagement, we developed a scalable brand identity system, including a logo, color palette, and typography. The system was designed for flexibility, allowing seamless application across both print and digital platforms—from business cards and presentations to online tools.

For the website, we crafted a narrative-driven, fully responsive design that prioritized clarity, storytelling, and engagement. With a structure built around key user journeys, we ensured that visitors could easily navigate the site, explore focus areas, and access reports. We also co-created content with the fund’s team to make sure the messaging resonated with diverse audiences, from investors to community partners.

The final result is a confident, accessible platform that reflects the fund’s values and invites meaningful engagement in the climate finance space. The design is built to scale as the fund grows, ensuring long-term impact and facilitating trust and action across the Middle East and South Asia.

Check out similar case-studies on our website. Planning a rebrand or looking to build a high-impact digital experience? Let’s talk—reach out to [email protected].

🍪 Bite-sized Insights

• In climate finance, a strong brand system does more than provide a visual identity, it actively signals credibility to investors and stakeholders. Through our work with Climate Equity Fund, we learned that investors interact with the brand before any project begins, assessing alignment with national climate priorities and leadership commitment.

• Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are often the most innovative in managing climate risks, but conventional climate finance fails them. Debt-heavy instruments and rigid funding structures assume stable economies and robust institutions, leaving high-risk, low-resource nations underfunded. By prioritizing grant-based, concessional, and context-specific capital, donors and DFIs can de-risk early investments, build local capacity, and unlock transformational climate solutions where they are needed most. ¹

🍿 This Month’s Top Picks

📖 Reading: Babel by R.F. Kuang

📺 Watching: Dark Matter (2024)

📻 Listening to: Empire by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand

📣 Community Shoutouts

Period Equity in Times of Crisis

This month, we’re spotlighting Mahwari Justice and Dastak Foundation, two grassroots feminist movements working together to meet one of the most overlooked needs in disaster relief: menstrual health. In response to this year’s devastating floods across Pakistan, they’ve launched a Solidarity Campaign to provide dignity kits containing pads, underwear, detergent soap, and painkillers for menstruating and pregnant persons displaced by disaster. Each kit costs 2 Euros.

By centering voices too often left unheard in relief efforts, the initiative is a reminder that recovery must be rooted in empathy. Support their cause on GoFundMe or donate to the account shared in the image.

📮 Let’s Work Together

At Ideate, collaboration isn’t just a value, it’s at the heart of everything we do. Whether you’re looking to collaborate or want to explore how human-centered design can help your work, we’re all ears. Let’s brainstorm together:

Ali Murtaza, Partner & Chief Design Officer– [email protected]

Or write to us on Instagram or LinkedIn! We're excited to see how we can work together.

1  https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/unlocking-climate-finance-for-least-developed-countries-innovations-and-opportunities/