Hum Capital

Redesigning a fintech brand on a mission

The Project

Redesign the Hum Capital visual brand and brand experience based on stakeholder feedback and to accommodate new product features. Define brand responses for all customer touchpoints.

The Challenge

At Hum Capital, my role was to unify a relatively young brand (<2 years old) that had had multiple creative agencies and freelance designers defining and executing without any communication or consistency across various touchpoints. This resulted in a poor customer and brand experience that eroded trust in the Hum Capital name and harmed our ability to fulfill our mission of connecting great companies with the right capital. 

Achieving this meant working with multiple internal teams and external stakeholders to research, redesign, test, validate and implement the new brand, refocus our messaging, and uplift all of our customer touchpoints including the Hum Capital website. On this project, I performed the following:

  • Wireframing

  • UI Design

  • Design Systems

  • User Testing

  • Visual Design

  • Brand Design

  • Illustration

  • Art Direction

  • User Research/Interviews

the process

The urgent fixes for the process included amending misleading language and removing design elements that were not working. Short term goals included addressing gaps in branding, unifying all applications of the brand, and supplying detailed new brand documentation. Long term goals included conducting stakeholder research, redesigning and launching the Hum Capital website, and integrating updated brand and messaging into the product experience.

Strategic refocus: Audiences

Hum adjusted its brand audience focus, with a stronger focus on companies looking for funding. The new breakdown was 70% companies, 20% investors looking for deal flow (companies to invest in), and 10% others (peers, media etc). The company also renewed its focus on its Mission Statement and customer success stories.

Redesigning the Hum brand

The Hum brand's previous visual identity appeared dated and did not align with modern fintech competitors. The color palette featured a red pop color that was mistaken for an error message and the typeface was used inconsistently. The redesign aimed to refine the color palette, develop a new illustration system, create more detailed typographic rules for all applications, and improve brand experience across all customer touchpoints.

Custom branded icon library

Comprehensive templated presentation library.

VIDEO CONTENT

All video content at Hum Capital was written, produced and art directed by me, in collaboration with various talented animators, SFX/voice-over artists and product marketers. View all Hum Capital video content on Youtube.

Redesigning the Hum Capital website

I undertook stakeholder research with key internal and external contacts across the business, including Hum Capital executives, sales and origination team members, product marketers, DQL’d users and MQL’d users. The interviews revealed the following: 

Key themes to be addressed:

  • Building trust with our audience groups. 

  • Simplifying our message, content and experience. 

  • Personalizing entry to the Hum Capital Platform. 

In relaunching the new website, the team placed a strong emphasis on customer success stories, social proof, and success metrics. As part of the Hum Capital brand promise to level the playing field for fundraising, there was a new focus on providing resources to new entrepreneurs. Other highlights included improved calls-to-action and product entry-points, clearer messaging about eligibility for our products, more imagery of our customers and team members, and of course, the fully uplifted new Hum Capital brand.

After launch, the website experienced a 39% increase in traffic and a 7% increase in conversions. View the live website here.

NEW CALL-TO-ACTION OPTIONS

Through user research, we found users were sometimes reluctant to immediately “Create an account”. By adding the option to “Speak to Hum” the website now allows clients a risk-free option to learn more and captures a previously lost source of new leads for Hum Capital Origination team.

CUSTOMER STORIES AND REAL PEOPLE

The previous Hum Capital website focused on the tech rather than the real world outcomes our tech facilitates. To better humanize Hum, I focused the website’s narrative on customer success stories and highlighted our own people.

RESOURCES

As part of the Hum Capital brand promise to level the playing field for fundraising, the website has a focus on providing resources to new entrepreneurs, via our Resources Center.

The Hum Capital Brand Experience work continues! If you’d like to discuss the project more, please email me at hello@elloisefoster.com.