Brand identity + product

Quoin: a brand for an AI agent that closes the books and holds the one entry that's wrong

Quoin is an AI agent that reconciles every account, posts the month-end close and holds back the entry that doesn't add up. We built it from scratch: a backstage world where every object has its taped outline, a lettered wordmark, the close dashboard, and the brand on posters, stamps and paper.

Project: An Alterra Studio project: we built the company's brand, product and launch from scratch
Stage: AI finance, Series A stage
Services: Naming, world and key art, wordmark and marks, product UI, posters and applications, animated board
Tools: Imagine (our in-house design app), Nano Banana Pro, Kling, HyperFrames

Brief

The problem and the brief

AI accounting startups all say "agentic". None of them shows a controller the one thing they need: who checked each number.

Quoin is an AI agent that closes the books. It reconciles every account, posts the month-end close and holds back the entry that doesn't add up, so a finance team signs off without the war room. Its buyer is the controller or CFO of a company of 50 to 500 people, who has to stand behind the numbers.

The brief, in a founder's words: "Our homepage sounds like every AI accounting startup, and it never shows a controller the one thing they need: who checked each number." The name is a printer's wedge: the piece that locks the type square before the page is printed.

What the buyer is up against

The research

6.4 days

for the median company to close a month's books. The slowest quarter takes 10 or more.

Source: APQC via CFO.com, 2018

18%

of accountants say they make a financial error at least once a day.

Source: Gartner via CPA Practice Advisor, 2024

73%

of accountants say new regulations have raised their workload.

Source: Gartner via CPA Practice Advisor, 2024

Three doubts a finance team brings to the first call

ControllerIf the agent posted it, can I defend it?
Staff accountantWhen it's wrong, will I even see where?
CFOWill our auditors accept numbers an agent prepared?

Logic

The strategy: everything in its outline

On a theatre's prop table every object sits in a taped outline, so the stage manager can see from across the room what's missing. The close works the same way: every account in its place, the one that isn't marked in pink.

Doubt 1 · Defend it?If the agent posted it, can I defend it?
Every account tied out to the cent
The close screen lists each account with the ledger, the bank or sub-ledger beside it, and the difference: 0.00 down the column, 4,212 of 4,213 lines matched, and the sign-off order underneath. The controller reads the proof, not a summary of it.
18% of accountants say they make an error at least once a day, so a controller signs only what they can check.
Doubt 2 · Where?When it's wrong, will I even see where?
The one entry held, in pink
Pink appears once on the screen: the outline round the one entry Quoin held. Beside it, in plain words: "Same invoice, paid twice." The reversal is drafted, not posted, with "Approve reversal" and "Keep held" as the only two choices.
Pink means one thing across the whole brand, on screens, posters and stamps alike, so the exception is the first thing anyone sees.
Doubt 3 · Auditors?Will our auditors accept numbers an agent prepared?
A paper trail a person signs
Quoin is listed as the agent in the sign-off, after which the controller and then the CFO sign. Every step is logged with its time, and the workpapers export in one click.
The month-end close takes the median company 6.4 days. The work an auditor asks for is already on the page when it ends.

System

The design system

Stage black, scuff grey and tape bone, with one spike pink. Pink is the flagged entry and nothing else, under 3% of any frame and never used for text.

Stage black #141416Grounds, the product
Scuff grey #55565BSecondary type and rules
Tape bone #E8E5DCType, paper, the outlines
Spike pink #FF3D7FThe one held entry. Never text

The world. A backstage prop table under a single bulb, every object in its taped outline. One outline is in pink. It reads as "everything in its place, except this" without a caption.

Wordmark and mark. Drawn lettering, traced as drawn. In the mark, the i is set upside down like a turned printer's sort, and its dot has fallen below the line in pink.

Type. Heavy grotesk headlines, so the serif stays in the wordmark alone. Amounts and dates are set in a monospace face.

What we left out. 9 of 10 competitors put "agent", "agentic" or "AI-native" in the first line, 6 use a pale white page, and 6 use an abstract symbol beside a plain wordmark. Quoin uses none of them.

Quoin key art: a dark prop table where every object sits in a taped outline, one outline in pink

The 10-second board, made for LinkedIn and X.

The turned sort: one i set upside down, its dot fallen in pink.

Poster: The October Close, a month-end in four acts

Poster: every account matched, one entry held

The October Close poster in a backlit case by a stage door at night

The Quoin mark rubber-stamped on an invoice held for sign-off

The mark letterpress-printed on a card pinned to a callboard

Quoin printed on a roll of bone tape with a pink strip

Method

The category audit

We scored 10 funded AI finance startups on our startup homepage benchmark. They're strong on proof, but only 1 of 10 says what it does on the first screen on both phone and desktop.

Each homepage was scored on 12 criteria, 0 to 2 each, at 1440 and 390 pixels wide. The group averages 17.8 out of 24, well above the 14.1 of our wider benchmark: 6 of 10 pair a named customer with a number.

The gaps are in what the first screen says. 4 of 10 state how they differ from the old way, 5 show the product at both widths, and 3 say that a person checks the agent's work. Those are the gaps Quoin's homepage is designed to close.

Homepage score out of 100 (12 criteria, 0 to 2 each): 10 funded AI finance startups, October 2026

Company A83
Company B79
Company C79
Company D75
Company E75
Company F75
Company G71
Company H71
Company I71
Company J63
Benchmark average, 100 startups59

Alterra Studio startup website benchmark 2026. Companies are anonymised.

The offer

What we'd ship

For a real AI finance company, this is a Brand + Website Build.

Brand: Name check, world and key art, wordmark and marks, palette and type, and the rule for the one pink
Homepage: A first screen that says what it does in a controller's words and shows the close, at desktop and phone width
Product: The close screen in the brand: the tie-out, the held entry, the sign-off
Launch: The animated board, posters, print pieces and social for launch week

After this

What's next

Build the homepage with the closed month as the first screen at 1440 and 390, and score it on the same benchmark.
Take it outdoors the October Close poster as a station takeover in the weeks before quarter-end.