CLAUDIA HART
contact
+61 490 380 154
claudia.hart@live.com
BRAND TRANSITION
When Cushon was acquired by NatWest in 2023, we had the exciting challenge of blending our pink, disruptive brand personality with NatWest's corporate identity. There were five important steps to this project.
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The goal of this project was to draw on the established, more sophisticated and corporate elements of the NatWest brand. As NatWest is a known, trusted household name, we wanted to benefit from that whilst maintaining our fun, disruptive and illustrative nature. The way we achieved this was analysing our user journeys and applying brand assets to various points of those journeys.
Prospects and clients would see a heavily purple brand, associated with NatWest, drawing on their credibility. As the user journey continues, members and employees would get a taste of the pink fun of the Cushon brand. We therefore split the user journey into two main categories, 'acquisition' and 'engagement'.
KEY ASSETS AND COLOUR APPLICATION
EXPLORATION
Character illustration and Corporate Memphis was a key part of the Cushon brand prior to acquisition. It's something we were recognised for by our members and it was used to break down the presentation and explanation of often complexed information, so we were keen to keep this element of our brand. The task was to explore how we could unify the use of characters with NatWest's current illustration style which consists only of static objects and is more iconography focused.
I collaborated with and directed an external creative agency, providing creative direction and delegating tasks to ensure the project aligned with our vision and objectives.
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NatWest illustration
Cushon illustration
APPLICATION
ILLUSTRATION ANALYSIS
After joining the NatWest group, we wanted to elevate the brand with a sense of sophistication by starting to use photography in our assets. This presented us with the opportunity to develop a Cushon-branded photography brief for Getty Images.
PHOTOGRAPHY BRIEF
