Project Launch
PROJECT TYPE
Company
Collaborators
NDTC: Building Design from the ground up
The first design hire
01. Built Design from 0 → 1
02. Defined & launched the brand
03. Designed the banking experience
DEFINING OUR BRAND
To establish the brand direction, I developed three distinct concepts for executive leadership: one rooted in enduring tradition and modern confidence, another leaning more heavily into contemporary fintech, and a third centered on protection and institutional security.
I advocated for Enduring Tradition, Modern Confidence. While competitors often leaned heavily into the visual language of crypto and technology, I saw an opportunity for NDTC to occupy a different space: modern and technically capable, but measured, established, and reassuring like traditional banking. The direction balanced a contemporary, technology-forward aesthetic with timeless institutional cues. It positioned the company as modern without chasing trends, communicating wisdom, capability, and calm authority within a complex digital asset market.
Leadership aligned and with the recommendation, and the concept became our north star as I moved into logo exploration and the broader identity system.
FROM STRATEGY TO IDENTITY
With the strategic direction established, I began translating those principles into a visual identity.
I explored a wide range of logo concepts in black and white before narrowing the strongest directions with stakeholders. From there, I increased fidelity, explored variations, introduced color, and evaluated how the identity could scale across different company and product touchpoints.
The goal wasn’t simply to create a recognizable mark. The identity needed to carry the same balance established during brand strategy: traditional credibility with a distinctly modern perspective.
BUILDING A BRAND SYSTEM
A logo alone doesn’t create a brand.
After establishing the identity, I expanded it into a broader system for use across the organization, defining how typography, color, imagery, voice, and visual patterns should work together.
I also created Brand Atlas, a centralized resource where employees could find approved logos, presentation materials, fonts, visual guidance, and voice and tone standards.
This transformed the identity from a collection of design assets into a system teams throughout the company could consistently use.
GIVING THE BRAND A VOICE
A brand isn’t only how it looks. It also needs to sound consistent wherever customers and employees encounter it.
After establishing our visual direction, I facilitated a workshop with our content writer to define how the same principles should translate into language. Together, we explored how National Digital could communicate with the credibility expected of a financial institution without becoming overly corporate, technical, or impersonal.
The resulting voice and tone framework established a shared communication philosophy: clear, confident, professional, and human.
BRINGING THE BRAND TO LIFE
With the visual identity and voice established, I had the opportunity to bring the pieces together through the design of National Digital’s public website.
The website became one of the first major expressions of the new brand. I translated our visual system and communication principles into a digital experience that needed to introduce an emerging company, explain a complex offering, and establish credibility with an institutional audience.
Rather than leaning into the visual conventions and hype often associated with crypto, I carried forward the direction we established during brand strategy: modern technology presented with the confidence, restraint, and credibility of an established financial institution.
The resulting experience brought our brand strategy, visual identity, and voice together into a single customer-facing expression of National Digital.
