Case Study
Bright Road Financial Services
As a brand-new woman-owned small business in a male-dominated field, Bright Road Financial Services needed a visual brand identity to differentiate from competitors, and show potential clients that financial businesses can be both professional and personable; and most importantly, trustworthy.
2022
SERVICES: Branding, Logo Design
SOFTWARE: Illustrator
The Brief
I was approached by the owner of Bright Road Financial Services, a small business aimed at helping other small businesses with their financials. She mentioned specifically wanting to signal a sense of warmth and comfort, something she didn’t see often in financial companies’ logos. The challenge for this project was to design a visual brand identity that encompasses both the professionalism of a financial service provider, but also the warmth and trustworthiness of a woman-owned small business.
Concept Exploration
Beginning a project with pencil and paper always helps me get all of my initial ideas down and figure out which direction to take. I began exploring every possible symbol I could think of, developing a catalog of ideas to jump off from.
Round 1 Concept Pitch
Focusing on combining the client’s inspiration examples they provided with aspects of well-known finance logos, the round 1 pitch deck aimed at finding a direction that the client and I both felt optimistic about.
The client liked the general direction the designs were heading, but wanted to lean closer to her original inspiration, which featured lots of plant- and sun-like motifs. This feedback informed my next round of designs.
Round 2 Concept Pitch
Focusing more on the client’s inspiration board per their feedback after round 1, the second round of designs were more reminiscent of plants and other natural themes. The color palette was also changed to only four colors; a more simplistic option.
Final Logo Pitch
The client chose a logo design from the second round, but liked the typography in one of the round 1 options, and wanted to see it mocked up before approval. I sent her a final logo pitch, using the color palette from the second round, which she approved.
Logo Suite
After the finalized logo design was approved, I exported the complete logo suite for delivery to the client, which consisted of the primary, secondary, icon, and monogram logo designs. Included in the folders were multiple formats (JPG, PNG, and SVG) as well as all approved color variations of each logo lockup.
Complete Brand Guide
After receiving client approval for the final logo design and color palette, the final step of this project was to put together a brand guide to clearly outline everything the client would need to know in the future to effectively and cohesively implement their new branding across multiple channels.
