Female Millennials are working more, earning more and taking on more financial obligations than ever before. Yet, they are underserved by a financial services market that has an overwhelming amount of content, information, and tools -- but none of which truly speaks to and helps her. This makes it hard for her to understand where to start, what to do, and what they need to secure financial health. Skimm Money is an integrated suite of products made for FMs to achieve financial confidence and success.
We began the project with a money audit which allowed us to aggregate and organize existing assets and gain a better understanding of scale and impact of the project. The ultimate goal was to align all Skimm Money channels under one brand identity. Followed by a creative competitive analysis, stakeholder interviews with team members & leadership, while also defining our target audience and brand framework.
We were launching this product ahead of the parent brands redesign. Under those conditions we knew that there would be gaps & challenges. With this reality, we wanted to make sure that we’re taking into account engineering time, launch plans, and the overall continuity of the brand and how users would respond to these changes. I began by creating 4 visual directions to help represent the overall tone of the experience.
Once feedback from stakeholders was collected, I continued to move forward and refine further the selected direction. This process took weeks of iterating all elements of the brand, including logomark, color, typography, illustration and animation styles, and their application across the web, an app, a premium newsletter and more. The final outcome was a working identity style manual.
At this point we began converting assets to reflect the larger brand refresh that was solidifying as well as the GTM materials. When so much of the world feels out of your control, theSkimm is working hard to show you the things you can control. So we’re launching Skimm Money.
Welcome to Skimm Money, beginning with the logomark, typography and color palette
Brand illustrations, iconography and animations.
I needed to source, hire, concept, and then commission about 20 freelance artists to develop 80 images for all of our financial editorial content.
Skimm Money App wireframes, visual design and app store assets
Skimm Money Subscription Newsletter
Lifecycle and transactional emails
Product launch materials
This project would not have been possible without so many talented people, designers, and our cross functional teams at theSkimm.
Credit:
Creative Direction & Design: Michael Gray
Designers: Minhee Kim, ML Howell, Daniel Creel