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2025

An identity to inspire a movement of climate impact investors

Role
Brand Consultant
Industry
Financial Services
Background Image
Overview

UNLESS is creating a new approach to financial advice—removing barriers, challenging outdated thinking, and helping Australians put their money where it matters most to pave a brighter, safer, and cleaner future.

The UNLESS team are only just getting started in building a movement of change agents. To transport their vision, the team sought a creative partner to help them develop a fresh, human-centered brand identity that would communicate a collective purpose to drive climate solutions, social justice, and lasting change.

We collaborated on a five-week project to shape a brand identity and website, setting the stage for a transformative mission to direct capital where it’s needed most.

Team

1 x Brand Design Consultant

Client Team

Ext Communications Agency

Areas of focus

Brand Identity

User Testing

Squarespace Build

How can we craft a bold and credible identity that signals our commitment to meaningful climate action — one that reflects our values, stands apart from greenwashing, and moves beyond maintaining the status quo?

Challenge to solve

The brand was developed using a human-centered approach: co-creating design directions with the UNLESS team, connecting to pre-developed client personas, and validating with prospective clients. My role included the following areas:

  • Planning and facilitating a client team brand workshop to gain insights into the brand direction.
  • Planning and facilitating a user test session with 15 external participants to acquire feedback on different visual routes and validate other brand areas such as the vision, mission, manifesto, and values.
  • Designing a light design system including the logo and colour/typographic styles.
  • Creating a set of supporting print materials such as business cards and letterheads.
  • Translating the design system into a Squarespace landing page, enabling the client to self-manage and update future web content.
Brand discovery

The brand discovery process was two-fold. The first step was to deep-dive into prior client research and gain inspiration for the brand routes through an internal workshop. The second step was to rapidly develop concepts to test in a user group.

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Internal brand workshop

This two-hour virtual brand workshop was split into three parts:

  1. Personality slides: here we set the tone for brand communication by positioning UNLESS between a pair of extremes.
  2. Brand application: with the brand positioning in mind, we went on to vote on possible directions for colour, typography, illustration, photography, and verbal language principles.
  3. Brand manifesto: finally, the team gave input to create the first interaction of a brand manifesto based on their mission and values.

Brand user test

Following the initial brand workshop, four design routes were explored and tested in a one-hour virtual session with 15 industry-relevant professionals. The session was split into two break-out groups. During this session, we gained insights and feedback on the brand purpose, mission, values, manifesto, and the four design routes.

Final outcome

The project culminated in the following deliverables:

  1. A validated light brand system.
  2. A set of brand assets including the logo, PowerPoint template, business cards, LinkedIn graphics, email signature, and letterhead.
  3. A one-page Squarespace website to promote the brand vision, team, and call-to-action to get involved by either becoming a client or partnering to pursue the vision of UNLESS.

If you want to create meaningful change, we’ll have common ground.

Let's talk
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