Zelle is a P2P payment service that lets consumers send and receive money directly from their mobile banking apps. While working with Zelle in various roles (graphic designer, art director, associate creative director), I was responsible for producing on-brand assets while continuously refining and expanding the brand guidelines. Below are the key visual branding elements I focused on, as well as some asset samples produced between 2017-2023.
Iconography
Zelle needed a library of icons that could be used to produce visually engaging, consistently on-brand assets on the fly. As Graphic Designer, I created a library of around 100 line icons. Then, as Art Director, I developed a solid filled icon style that could be used to add more color and interest. These solid filled icons also helped to serve as a starting point for more detailed illustrations. Finally, as Associate Creative Director, I worked with my team to refine and expand the library to over 200 icons.
The below infographic demonstrates how the icons were used to significantly reduce turnaround times for design assets. When our team was short-staffed, I was able to deliver this infographic with less than a day's notice because I pulled all of the icons from our existing library.
Shapes
The Zelle shapes, derived from the logo, can be used in various ways across branded assets.
One of my favorite use cases was this stage treatment at Pitchfork Music Festival, where Zelle was a sponsor. When we needed a branded (but not hit-you-over-the-head-with-it) aesthetic for this backdrop and podium, I knew right away it was the perfect place to showcase the shapes.
And for those who might be wondering, that's Hannibal Buress (performing as Eshu Tune) in the first photo.
Another application of the shapes was in the form of confetti. In the early stages of the brand, the confetti was difficult to scale across different assets because there were no guidelines for it. Each time we wanted to use the confetti, the designer would have to individually color and place each tiny shape within the design (Can you imagine how long this took? And how inconsistent the confetti looked between different designs?). As a solution, I created a master file with large swatches of confetti on brand background colors. The result? The confetti was used more often and more consistently to add visual interest and reinforce the brand.
The Holiday Guide to Tipping & Gifting below is a great example of how the Zelle icons and confetti came together to create fun, engaging branded assets.
Photography
When I joined the company in 2017, the brand photography guidelines soon became my responsibility to own and develop. As I worked on various Zelle shoots, I refined the guidelines to be more distinctive and actionable for photographers (as well as designers sourcing and editing stock photos). One of my favorite projects was creating wardrobe guidelines for the brand, which helped our photography library appear more cohesive and unique to the brand. Some examples are below, and you can find more here!
Motion Graphics
Part of my role with Zelle was to oversee projects created in collaboration with agencies, making sure the brand was consistently represented to reinforce brand equity across all touch-points. Motion graphics videos were especially challenging, as there was no previously established illustration or animation style. I partnered with an agency called Epipheo to develop a consistent, scaleable aesthetic for animated videos across various campaigns, from product explainer videos to educational content.
Below is an example from a series of consumer-facing videos outlining various payment scams and how to avoid them.
Motion graphics also played a key role when it came to our B2B audiences. The video below was targeted at financial institutions, explaining the benefits of offering Zelle to consumers through their mobile banking apps.
Typography
I worked with my design team to formulate a consistent, versatile type hierarchy across a wide range of collateral pieces. Below is an example of how this came to life across various B2B-facing one-pagers.
Color
If you know anything about the Zelle brand, you know that it's purple. But there's a lot more nuance that goes into applying color to Zelle-branded materials. Starting with the original brand palette, I led the continued development of guidelines around color, accommodating various types of content as the brand grew to new heights.
The original brand palette featured purple and white as the primary colors, with indigo and light purple secondary colors, and a green accent. I added grays and two additional purple accents, which made the palette more versatile—especially for iconography and illustrations.
I developed the natural skin tone palette because, well, illustrated purple and green people start to look like ghouls. The most frequent use case for this was an illustrated hand holding a phone, which you'll see in various assets as you scroll down this page.
We all know that when someone is scrolling through social media, their attention span is next to nothing. To help mix things up and keep our audiences engaged, we needed more colors to work with. I worked with an agency to develop the extended palette for social media. To see how it all came to life, check out this page!
Zelle produces a large volume of educational content, especially regarding how to use Zelle safely and avoid scams. I created this extended palette for educational content to call out potential safety concerns (red) and tips on how to use Zelle safely (yellow).
My role: Art Director; Creative Director; Design Lead; Prop & Wardrobe Stylist
Agency partners: Huge; Epipheo; Pereira O'Dell | Other contributors: Blake Bronstad; Julie Grantz; Ryan Gallagher
