In today's fast-paced financial world, many individuals feel overwhelmed by the complexities of managing their money. Bloom is an innovative online banking app designed to empower users, particularly those less experienced in finance, by providing accessible resources and tools to grow their financial capabilities.
Katie, a recent graduate who is starting her first full time job, is feeling overwhelmed by the new complexities of managing her finances. While trying to pay for a mortgage and have enough money to support her lifestyle, Katie lacks knowledge about savings, investments, and benefits of various financial products such as ISAs. Despite having access to her current bank and their online platforms, she is struggling to find guidance to help her make informed decisions about her finances such as budgeting.
To help Katie and users in a similar position, Bloom’s aim is to provide easy to understand educational resources on finance, tools for tracking savings and investment, and guidance to build confidence in their financial decision making. Bloom will not only help manage users finances effectively but also provide a deeper understanding of how to grow wealth over time.
To begin my brand development, I had to pick out my brand values. These values were going to be the foundation for any decision making I was going to make. I created a mind map to decide. The values I choose were Trust Security, Information, Accountability and Support. I believed these were going to set me apart from competitors and users would feel a connection with the app as they believed in our values.
After choosing the values I had to decide on a name, in the end I went with Bloom. I thought this was the perfect fit for the brand and the brands purpose of growing users financial capabilities. The idea came from a a few mind maps generating the idea of a plant growing and growing until it eventually blossoming into a fully grown flower, representing the user. I also started sketching brief ideas of the logo. Which led to many digital ideas.
After choosing the name, a colour pallet needed to be selected. I chose bright and happy colours to represent my values and brand while also appealing to my younger audience.
For the Banking App I based the app layout on Revolut. I think Revelot has the easiest navigation out of all the online banking apps. I made an interface inventory of Revolut and then began creating a component library for all the buttons I am going to use in my app.
For the landing page, I wanted to include a design aspect and include some flowers to represent growth and blooming. I used Figma to create the landing page and used shapes to create different designs, I also included a larger logo to separate different subjects. I also created a Dark Mode version of the app, in which I actually prefer.
Finally, Brand Guidelines needed to be created for the brand. As this was the last step, we had to incorporate all of the features from the brand, which was a great perspective of the brand as a whole. The personality of the brand was really shown on the brand guidelines.
A problem that kept me back from completing other important topics was deciding on a name and logo mark. This topic was the one I spent the most time on, and to be honest I think a lot of time was wasted on this topic as well. I couldn't decide on a name firstly, to which then I decided to move on and start designing logo marks with no name. This led to wasted time on multiple names that I most likely wasn't going to choose as they didn't reflect the brand.
I was beginning to become frustrated with this project as I couldn't decide on the final name, none of the names seemed rightly suited. I was feeling low about my skills within design and feeling very behind on this project. I was scared that I would not be able to submit the project in time.
To overcome this issue I had to take a break from this section and go on to the next step. I believe I was just trying to get the name and logo mark over and done with as it was taking up so much time. I was beginning to become behind on this project and was feeling During this break from designing I spoke with classmates and family about the problem I was having. I thought it would be a good idea to get a perspective from someone outside the situation. I asked for others opinions on what they think of the , I thought this would be important as those I asked were within the target audience. I ended up just ranting about my situation and being very open.
I really enjoyed this project as a whole. It was interesting to see the different stages you need to go through to create a brand and an app. This project gave me a great perspective of the amount of effort and care it takes to make a brand, which I will appreciate a lot more after finishing this project. Looking back, there is a lot of things I would have done differently, such as the process of deciding on the name and logo mark. However, I am glad this happened as now I know to take a much different approach therefore this won’t happen again. Overall, I am happy with how my app turned out and I believe this was one of my better projects I have completed. I am more happy that this project wasn't easy and I struggled with it. I think I am a better designer after this project which makes me excited for future projects.
This project was very challenging, I enjoyed it for the most part, however I have learned so much from this project. After asking some friends and family about their opinions and being able to freely say what I feel about the project I had learned exactly what I want from my brand. When I had finally chosen the right name, the next few steps that I had to took went very smoothly and with more ease. Designing the touch points and choosing the typefaces were fun, and I was feeling a lot better about myself and my work.
I felt as if the name, colour scheme, logo mark etc. were well suited to the brand. I learnt that I was putting pressure on myself to complete this project completely by myself, with no help, encouragement, guidance, or advice from anyone other than the people inside the course. This taught me that this was completely wrong and I should be open to constructive criticism from people who might not be interested in design, as they give a fresh perspective with unbiased opinions, which led me to new ideas.