Mortgage Center
Brand Evolution

Graphic & Digital Design Art Direction Brand Design

Timeline

1 year

Roles

Visual Designer Creative Director Graphic Designer

Deliverables

Visual Design Branding Strategy & Design Web Design Collateral Design

Overview

When I first joined Mortgage Center, they were in the process of a digital transformation within the company. We were adopting more digital platforms and tools that helped to guide the brand evolution. Major developments were formed over the span of about a year, along side our transformation roadmap.

We had multiple projects planned that would help us improve our brand strategy by leveraging customization and digital best practices. Check out my process and some of the creative created afterwards.

Where I Come In

I was Mortgage Center's lead Visual Designer and often assumed the role of Creative Director within our team. I helped shape the brand through the evolution of our style guide, brand treatment, and graphic/digital design.

Objectives

Our brand strategy was to position ourselves better in the digital environment and to stand out from our competitors by leaning into what makes us different, our credit union community.

Our Brand Strategy

Benefits and posistioning of the Mortgage Center brand:

Fast and efficent mortgage process. Team of mortgage experts to help members find the best loan option for their need. Unique Credit Union Exclusive loan products. Credit Union values. Lower fees than most lenders.

Considerations

Font Access & Web Availability

Some of our partners with design teams would create their mortgage material using our brand guidelines. To make it easier for external teams to stick to our standards, and to have our website match our print materials, we switched our digital font to Montserrat. This would be implemented as a part of our website redesign and helped us achieve more brand consistency.

ADA Compliance & Contrast

We had to make slight variations of our colors for them to be high enough contrast for AA compliance on our website. This involved adding a darker version of our green and orange colors for various call-to-action and interactive elements.

Visual Style

I aimed to lean into more angular elements and gradients used in our logo. This would help create depth in our designs and resemble the composition of our logo more.

Color Palette

We were using all of our primary and secondary colors pretty equally and without any obvious method. I wanted to lean into our logo colors more and identify our call-to-action colors for the new website. We would use our secondary accent colors to differentiate between themes and parts of the mortgage process (or internal departments).

Iconography

I created iconography to add a recognizable visual element for all of our mortgage products. By doing this, I could leverage them on external and internal pieces to create consistency and the ability to easily decipher between products.

Process & Delivery

Email Design Strategy

The email redesign was one of my first large projects at the company. During the brand evolution, we revisited our email journeys and templates. After visiting the original design we started by implementing some modern email best practices:

Website Redesign

One of the next projects we completed was the website redesign which included revisiting the site's architecture, content, and overall design. This is where we redefined the brand's color palette to minimize the use of our secondary colors and lean into our logo colors.

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Marketing & Collateral Redesign

We used and improved on the visual elements used within our brand with each project eventually achieving the desired direction. Here are some examples of various collateral designs using the evolving brand direction:

Feedback & Reception

We received compliments from our company and partners on the new brand design. Leveraging more technology and optimizing our brand for digital consumption helped us create a stronger style that was more cohesive across all of our channels. The new design helped elevate our brand and contributed to generating new partnerships and business for Mortgage Center.

Mortgage Center Brand Evolution