New branding design for financial services firm Alpha Insurance Analysts

As an agency, it’s rarely the case that our work is thematic in some way. Its variety consistently puts paid to that. But one thing is a constant: we put typography first in our design projects. Drilling down further, of all our work, the projects completing branding design for financial services firms has been the much-deserved lynchpin of that.

Around a year ago, I gave an online talk (which became a blog post) about how the use and application of typography on the web had changed during the years I’ve been running a business. Today, my belief is that choice is spectacular and the small foundry type designer is king – to me anyway. This faith of mine has ended up manifesting itself in our work repeatedly. That’s whether it’s for a firm of architects, journalists or antiques specialists.

Our most recent project for specialist insurance marketplace consultancy Alpha Insurance Analysts does this too, putting modern, striking typography front and centre to give character and strength of purpose to their message. We’ve devised an entirely new corporate identity system for the financial services firm, combining an evolution of their colour palette which is applied to a set of striking gradients, as well as two type families, Cambon by General Type Studio and GT Sectra by Grillitype.

Gradients and graphic shapes

Central to the new Alpha brand is an unusual blend of colours and shapes that forms the backdrop to key parts of the site. Having trialled several different ways of drawing a new Greek alpha, the new logo has been drawn based on a smooth, simple custom shape of parallel lines that is paired with the modern type set we’d chosen for the business.

We spent some time working on different options for the new colour palette, beginning by evolving the red and grey the company had long used. To add variety and flexibility to  this, we added a set of warm secondary tones which bring a richness the previous identity lacked. The other benefit of this mix of gradients is the variety of themes it brings throughout the site, delineating each section in a simple way.

Increasing headshot headcount

One particular lockdown bugbear has been the impossibility of obtaining good quality headshots of our clients. It’s a comparative detail in the broad context of a big website project like Alpha, but surprisingly important for the simple reason that people like looking at people. Where these galleries are inconsistent – usually a blend of selfies, passport-style images and pictures that are years out of date – it inevitably reflects poorly on the team.

As an alternative to bought-in third party shots, there’s no doubt that custom brand photography makes all the difference to a website. In this instance our regular photographer Andy Rose and I went in to meet with Alpha back in October. The result was a great set of new team shots along with a series of more informal conversational images of the directors which we’ve used as secondary pieces to add context to the site.

By chance, the day of the shot ended up being the most beautiful one with perfect blue skies, and we took the opportunity to spend an hour walking around the Lloyd’s of London building taking a series of beautiful close-up images of the iconic Richard Rogers structure. These back up Alpha’s symbiotic professional relationship with Lloyd’s which is set out in some detail on the site. In particular I enjoy the fact that Alpha sees Lloyd’s through its own set of shots, in a sense much like the work they do. It also means that this branding design for financial services project owns its own original content, which is very satisfying.

Analytical thinking, presented clearly

Our new website for Alpha Insurance Analysts profoundly reimagines how the business appears online. Central to the design project was to present a highly informed organisation that puts a deep knowledge of data and professional advice front and centre. This is riven through the website on almost every page, with high tailored news appearing throughout. We’ve given Alpha the ability to carefully filter each article by a range of topics.These themes are then applied to each primary content page, such that the pieces that appear (of the dozens they post each month) are specific, relevant and thoughtful.

Across the rest of the site, we’ve presented Alpha’s services in a visual, appealing manner with data sets, information graphics and the custom imagery we shot of the Lloyd’s building spacing throughout each page.

We’ve added another highly in-demand feature to the site – gated content. This gives users the ability to download Alpha’s premium data, such as Lloyd’s syndicate results, after completing a simple form passing their email address to Alpha, such that the connection can be more enduring. We’ve had a lot of interest from clients in features of this kind in the last few months, so it’s great to really hone the mechanism here.

The end result of all the entire Alpha Insurance Analysts job is a comprehensive branding design for financial services project that communicates a modern, busy company at the cutting edge of their field and creatively reboots the organisation for the years to come.

Good branding design for financial services is a great investment

Working across the different nice providers of financial services, great, original design is vital. If you’re working at a long-standing business, are just getting started – or feel nobody ‘quite gets’ your ideas and ethos, why not get in touch to discuss a range of different approaches?

We can work on designs from the creative to the corporate, depending on your brief and budget.

Call us on 020 7351 4083 or email us direct.

Visit the Alpha Insurance Analysts website

Our portfolio page about the project

More of our work for financial services firms