Capital One Rebrand
Capital One is a large American bank with over 62 million customer in the US. It launched in the UK in 1997 as a credit card provider offering a wide range of credit cards suited to individual needs and circumstances, often providing a card to many individuals that will not be accepted by High Street banks due to either no or poor credit ratings it has over 3 million customers in the UK.
Role: Digital Design Director Sector: Fintech Date: Launched 2019
Brief
I joined Capital One in 2016 as their Digital Design Director. The brand and marketing material was looking tired, dated and in need of a refresh to appeal more to UK customers and attract new ones.
My Role & Team
I run the rebranding project reporting back to the CMO, I was responsible for selecting a branding agency to work with who could bring fresh ideas and challenge the typical credit card marketing look. After a number of pitches we selected the awarding winning London agency Dixon Baxi, I had previously worked on a rebranding project with them at Betfair in 2013 and was confident we could produce a new look together. My inhouse design team at Capital One worked closely with Dixon Baxi running discovery workshops to help define the look and experience, supported with stakeholder interviews, customer focus groups and user testing we worked with their designers to create design concepts and prototypes. I presented back to stakeholders in the UK and liased with brand at Capital One in the US.
The new bold, colourful and friendly look with a contemporary feel.
Themes
Two design themes were created
1. Inspired by Nature - used natural shapes, photographic images of natural environments such as sea, forest and mountains and a colour palette of muted tones applied to recycled materials.
2. Simplicity finance made simple - used bold colours, and a simple paper cut out style iconography combined with images of people.
Process
Immediately we preferred Option 2. Feeling this was bolder and better represented the Capital One Mission statement “ to help our customers succeed by bringing ingenuity, simplicity, and humanity to banking.” And vision statement “ we dare to dream, disrupt and deliver a better way. ”
Stakeholder feedback was also positive "The strong blue as the base gives a nod to the historic brand identity and feels safe and stable, the new colours really standout in what's a pretty staid sector."
we did not want to dismiss option one so next steps were to refine the two design options and get feedback from UK customers.
We ran 6 focus groups, 2 in London, 2 in Birmingham and 2 in Manchester with 6 participants in each group, one group consisted of existing customers and one with non customers, they were a combination of ages, gender and all used credit cards. The sessions were held in independent user testing facilities as we did not want to reveal the industry the designs were for or that brand was Capital One until the end of each session.
Here's some feedback from the sessions.
Overall the participants preferred option 2 'Simplicity'. Feedback from the testing was the graphical elements were preferred to the images of people who many felt were too model like and didn't reflect their daily lives, as one customer poignantly said 'I often use my card to get me through the month for things like school uniforms or new shoes for the kids."
We refined the designs focussing on using the graphical cut out images and built a prototype for a card application. The design tested well and was an opportunity to improve the usability of the long form which resulted in a reduced time to complete and increase in applications.
Mobile iOS App rated 4.8 on the Apple App Store
Here's some customers feedback
"App is good for checking summary of card activity, and is easy to use if you need to activate a new card or report a card lost or stolen and instantly freeze or unfreeze it if I've misplaced it!"
" I love that I can control my credit card on the app. It's very easy to use (stupid proof) now I can stay ahead of my monthly bill with just one click."
"Looking much better modern and easier to read."
A Comprehensive Style Guide
The rebranding style guide produced by Dixon-Baxi was a general guide to the rebrand. It include examples of how the new colours, typography and tone of voice could be applied. Our design team took these general guidelines and applied them across all of Capital One's digital products. These UI design explorations helped to evolve Capital One's digital design language.
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A detailed UI design kit
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Documented typography, colours, UI patterns, iconography
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Documented padding , grids and UI component
Iconography
A new set of rebranded iconography was design to match the simplicity of the new Capital One brand. The icons would primarily be used in the mobile banking app. The icons below are a small selection of the the new iconography.
