Edelman Financial Engines Rebrand

In 2018, Financial Engines and Edelman Financial Services merged into one company: Edelman Financial Engines.

The brief asked for an identity that was:

• Simple.
• Credible and established. We were asking people to trust us with their life savings.
• Human and approachable. Not too "techy" and not too "financial."
• Different from competitors.
• Built around "Edelman" and "Engines" as what made us different.

The name was the hardest constraint. Two companies with equal weight meant one brand with two names. For consumers, it had to be "Edelman Financial Engines." For workplace and business clients, it had to work as just "Financial Engines." Every decision had to hold up both ways.

The idea behind the brand was "Life Planning": financial planning that adapts as your life changes. The company wanted to be seen as the industry's first Life Planner, an ongoing partner instead of a plan that sits on a shelf.

Design a logo and identity that met the brief and worked with both names. Then turn it into a brand system, with color, photography, pattern, illustration and icons, that a team spread across the company could use consistently on retail signage, stationery and product.

Designing the logo

The company hired an outside agency to create the new logo, and internal designers explored options alongside as well. When it came down to the last four logos, all four were mine. After a few tweaks, one of them was chosen over the agency's work.

The logo is an "EFE" monogram. It plays with positive and negative space to show the depth and layers of the company's planning services, set along a path that stands for the chapters of a client's life. A brighter red signals a commitment to a great experience, and a warmer blue anchors the name.

Choosing the colors

I looked at competitors' logos and colors and landed on red and blue as the main colors. Together they were unique in the industry, and they carried forward colors from both companies. Red also works as an action color, which fit the idea of Life Planning as something you act on.

Building the brand system

Triangles. The angles in the logo inspired a system built on triangles. They stand for a client's path, where each decision affects the next and things keep moving forward.

Photography. I mostly used stock photos and made them our own by placing them inside triangle shapes, like a peek into someone's life.

Illustration. I started from unDraw, a free illustration library, so a team spread across the company had a consistent base to work from. It still took real design work, color studies and a clear concept to make it feel like ours instead of generic.

Icons. Font Awesome was flexible enough to scale and easy for engineers to build with and extend.

Physical spaces. The system also showed up in offices and public spaces, with the triangle motif and the line "From here forward."

The logo shipped everywhere

It rolled out across 125+ retail locations, stationery and product.

Clients stayed and were happy

After the rebrand, the company beat its client retention targets, with 96% overall client satisfaction.

Product work didn't start over

The colors, photo treatment, patterns, illustration approach and icons became the foundation for the next two years of product work. The client portal, the onboarding experience and the company's first design system all built on this identity. (See Edelman Financial Engines: Selected work.)

What I learned

Free resources still need a design budget. unDraw saved a lot of time, but it took ongoing work, color studies, concept work and steady customization, to keep it from looking like generic free art. A free starting point only becomes something a brand owns if you invest in it.

A brand is the start of the product, not a separate thing. Because the identity was built with product in mind, down to an icon set engineers could extend, the product team could build on it directly instead of starting over.