Defining EvoShare’s Illustrative Voice
EvoShare partners with 10,000 online & local merchants and 700,000 hotels around the world that give users cash-back toward their financial future.
The Problem
When I joined the team in March 2018 their mission was clear, to funnel cash-back toward their users' retirement. Their identity was not, it was intertwined with the retirement and cash-back industry stereotype and limiting their growth potential. The photography had predominantly white faces of people shopping and retiring (think elderly folks looking at sunsets on the beach). It just blended in with the rest of the retirement industry, not of a multi-faceted tech company.
To bring some personality into the brand I switched from photography to illustration which would allow us to iterate faster and show off parts of the product and new features. The image library we built aimed to be playful, diverse, and integrated across the product. As time passed we slowly refined the style and built a collection that could be used in several applications.
Setting up parameters
I teamed up with the content team to come up with several themes we could riff off of. Family saving, an area of the platform that was being developed. Co-worker interaction, which tied into the team competition feature, and various ways an individual would get cash-back.
From there, I threw a lot of different styles at the wall and pretty quickly realized that while a flat illustration style had us heading in the right direction, there was just too many colors going on that made it difficult to track the imagery back to the EvoShare brand.
Defining the colors
While I was figuring out the illustration style I started to define the color palette that could be used as an initial step to bring the images together. And to hopefully, make it easier to pass on the direction of this style to future designers.
Here is the application of that step for our users:
Simplifying the style
We were getting closer and got some great feedback from users and partners who were starting to form color recognition to the blue, green, and orange at Evoshare’s core. The preference of end users (based on social impressions) were for white backgrounds and for some reason faceless people. We rolled with it and continued refining.
To push the boundaries of playfulness, we started exploring with proportions, making the characters smaller, the coins bigger, and the interactions a reflection of our target audience. Employees. It was at this stage that “the blobs” as I lovingly call them took shape. I think we needed something a little extra in the graphics to give some depth to the image and create a little bit of a different tempo.
Application
With a unified look in place I hired another designer who could take over the illustration project and I oversaw the library buildout that would include some major themes like workplaces, shopping, app interaction, and product feature integrations.
While these were being crafted I looked at our existing products and started weaving in these images so that EvoShare could be recognized, no matter what the platform.
Pitch Presentation:
At some point evoshare went from being available to everyone, to an employee benefit. It was important to include illustrations in the google slides that showed employee interactions, as well as between their employer, who we tried to position as a “hero” for bringing the saving solution to their employees.
IMPACT:
The deck that was created helped to convert employer sign-ups by 20% to 50%. Below are just a few slides that show how the illustration was weaved into the supporting text.
Employee Welcome Emails:
As a way to support newly signed on employers, we created 5 emails that would be sent out in the first 30 days through MailChimp. These emails educated employees on how to sign up and use EvoShare. When the new illustration style was introduced the emails were also revised to have one call to action per email and relay the evoshare platform in a series rather than all at once.
IMPACT:
The email length was shortened by half and employee sign-ups on average went from 7% to 30%.
Marketing Materials:
Brochures and posters were also created to help employers confidently roll out the EvoShare solution to their employees. We had a lot of fun thinking about all the ways employees could use our existing merchant network to save for their future while stuck at home and sheltering in place.
We launched a savers guide that we were able to co-brand alongside existing partners who had white-labled the platform. It was one of my favorite projects because it turned into an evergreen piece we could use across many mediums to educate existing users and attract those who hadn’t signed up when the employer first launched.
Creating a Design System to Meet Demand
Around the time the Savers guide was created, the busy work for the design team was at an all time high. Our existing and newly signed on partners wanted their own brochures, which had to be customized with the employers unique sign-up link. I trained the two other designers on this process and we got it down to a science, 10 minutes for each employer. But, I knew there had to be a better way.
In talking with my partner, who is not a designer, I discovered an INGENIOUS solution (I’m still excited about it) that would allow the design team to create editable assets that anyone without a design degree could alter.
We re-built every marketing brochure in google slides, with editable text and locked backgrounds. I then met with our sales and customer support team to teach them how to copy the template we’ve created and substitute out logos or change/link the text. This worked beautifully and allowed anyone to create the customized marketing collateral in a matter of seconds.
