Case Studies

Engaging retail financial brand created for pension advisor

The studio has completed an extensive branding and visual identity project for South East England’s pension specialist and retail financial brand, Portafina.

Portafina help consumers manage their pension savings through a process called pension release. Simply put, this enables savers to draw down on their existing private pensions and put the capital to work in tax free savings or use it to fulfil other living ambitions.

We conducted company wide research combined with sector competitor analysis, and presented the findings in a set of strategic recommendations. The nugget of the brief involved a name change in order to make the brand more visible in an SEO context. The company incumbent name was Portal Financial. This name conflicted with other heavily saturated search terms (i.e.: Financial Portal) and therefore became invisible to Google’s search algorithms.

We went into a brand naming process and decided on creating a related pronoun which conveyed some past heritage yet provided the brand with unique nomenclature. We felt Portafina was a good fit. It’s a simple part portmanteau of the previous brand names. We also liked the secondary connection to Portofino, a charming fishing village in Italy’s northern Genoese coast.

We wanted to convey a look and feel which portrayed a more young at heart image to pension finance. This materialised in bright colours in complimentary schemes and a novel image approach. The image art direction featured inspirational POV (Point of View) imagery of folks living out an adventurous spirit.

The visual identity combined bold energetic colours with dynamic rotating vector containers. These carried a series of overlaid textures offset against the background. The result was a simple and adaptable system which could be applied across all the brand touchpoints in a variable yet consistent manner.

We have supported the client through the full branding remit from design communications, advertising and visual identity and delivered the new identity supported by a comprehensive brand guideline kit.

Have a look at the full case study for this bold financial brand identity.