NerdWallet Advisors
A unique branding opportunity
In 2023, NerdWallet expanded its business to include formal financial planning. For a monthly fee, users could sign up to work with a NerdWallet-backed Certified Financial Planner. Subscribers would receive expert advice on saving, budgeting, debt management, and more.
For legal reasons, this product needed to be hosted on a separate site, and had to look "different enough" from NerdWallet's core brand to be recognizable as a separate entity. With those requirements in mind, I created a "similar but different" visual identity for NerdWallet Advisors.
Brand expression
The team wanted to focus on making NerdWallet Advisors feel professional and approachable. Getting 1:1 guidance from a real-life financial planner was our big differentiator. Although we didn't have a set team of advisors to showcase when we created the brand, we wanted to make sure that the competitive advantage was clear to potential users when they engaged with us in the future.
NerdWallet Advisors primary logo
Collage example
The NerdWallet Advisors visuals came together using several motifs that reference tactile objects like cut paper, grids, and tape. These textures and patterns referenced finance and mathematics in a way that felt both hands-on and friendly. Through a color palette of blues, yellows, and neutrals, the brand felt somewhat DIY — something we felt our audience would respond well to.
As for showing 1:1 guidance, we leaned heavily into collage to help illustrate the kinds of help someone would get from an Advisor. Mortgages, loans, paying down debt, you name it, we could show it. This visual treatment allowed us to bring in lots of "human touch" to any asset we created.
Toolkit
After defining the brand expression, I built a visual toolkit for NerdWallet Advisors. Given that the product was (and still is) in its infancy, we knew that other designers, writers, and even outside agencies may be tasked with creating assets for the brand.
This toolkit (and accompanying Figma asset library) acts as a brand guideline for NerdWallet Advisors and includes direction on things both big and small like logo, color, typography, collage and photography styles, and so much more.
Landing page
Once we had created the NerdWallet Advisors brand, I worked closely with (the very talented) Laura Orozco to create a landing page that explained how NerdWallet Advisors worked to potential subscribers.
These users would land on the page from a paid ad or the NerdWallet homepage, and we wanted to make the value of the service clear to them.