Turning our brand promise into practice
A look at diversity, equity, and inclusion in brand design
By: Rob Nikzad, Robin Juan, Debbie Kim, Amy Wong, Natalie Garnett, Kristyn Braden, Chloe Dalby, Jay Borrelli, Natalie Cowan, Katie Booker, Anita Yung, Felicia Shivakumar & Brian Villanueva
As designers at NerdWallet, we strive to give careful thought to the imagery and experiences we put out in the world. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have always been important to us as individuals, but it became imperative this past year to recommit to these values by making them a formal part of our team’s process. To show, not just tell.
As our country faced its systems of inequity, we asked ourselves how we as a Design organization could start to confront and dismantle our own biases. In response, our VP of Design, Jeff Mahacek, shared his perspective on DEI and design leadership. And as a Brand Studio team, we reflected on how we could bring more intention to representing DEI in brand design, specifically across NerdWallet’s illustration, photography, and advertising.
As designers, we know that systems don’t change themselves — people do. So we developed the following statement as our guiding ethos:
We strive to approach every design decision intentionally while avoiding performative actions and tokenism. We know that diversity and inclusivity don’t stop at skin color. We consider intersectionality across gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, and ability. We challenge Eurocentric assumptions of beauty and body type, and we celebrate expressions of the individual. Our work also reexamines power dynamics: who do we often see in positions of power and financial success, and how can we shift this perspective towards a more equitable one?
Our primary goal is to ensure we’re empowering our audience and capturing the diversity of the communities and individuals who come to us with their money questions. So we gathered these learnings and best practices into brand guidelines to help us ground our everyday decisions in active allyship. This ongoing work shows up across three key pillars of NerdWallet’s brand expression: illustration, advertising, and photography.
Illustration
In our illustrations, we have the opportunity to celebrate individuality by drawing unique people who reflect the diversity of the world around us.
Over the past year, our illustration style has evolved from a geometric, flat style to a more organic, dimensional style. This change has helped ground us in realism by adding more depth and personality to the people we illustrate. For example, instead of reusing the same geometric body parts from person to person, we use reference photography to inspire us to create a multitude of body types. And instead of using colors like blue or purple for skin tones that hint at diversity in the abstract, we use a palette of realistic skin tone colors to clearly and intentionally represent ethnic diversity in our work. These choices help us create illustrations that look and feel like real people.
We will continue to illustrate people with diverse body types, ethnicities, facial features, ages, gender identities, disabilities and more in our work. And since representation can come in many forms, we’re always on the lookout for opportunities for self-expression (through fashion choices, for example) to help paint a richer picture of who these people are.
Advertising/TV
Across our advertising, our goal is to create work that speaks to our audience — we strive to make commercials that move hearts and minds (or at least make you crack a smile!). Historically, casting is where we have focused most on showing diversity. But this broader initiative has inspired us to think about how we can consider DEI in other parts of the process as well: from the production partners we hire to help make the work, to the very stories we tell. Because we fundamentally believe that the best creative is informed by diverse perspectives.
In casting, an approach that has worked well for us is using gender-neutral pronouns in our ad scripts, which forces us to be less biased in who we see filling those roles. We also try to be intentional and balanced in our casting specs (for example, challenging heteronormativity when it comes to casting couples). As a director of one of our recent commercials said, “Financial literacy and money goals don’t discriminate.”
By considering DEI cohesively across all of our work — not just within a single campaign — we’re able to make creative that is both strategic and aligned to our goals. In one commercial, that might look like a woman of color in her twenties using the NerdWallet Best-Of Awards list to find the best credit card. In another, it may be a 40-something white man sharing his passion for the NerdWallet app with a passerby. And in others, it may mean there’s a chorus of voices bringing our message to life.
Photography
When it comes to photos of real people, we have become increasingly reliant on stock photography — due in part to the ongoing pandemic. With less opportunity to create bespoke imagery, we feel greater responsibility to source images that both fit our brand style and reflect our values.
Our approach to photography encourages mindfulness so that we avoid using photography that reinforces implicit biases. We encourage showing women in positions of power, disability without tokenization, and LGBTQ+ communities in everyday settings (rather than performative situations). We seek balance and equal representation by not over-sourcing for a particular gender or ethnicity. We perform regular audits of our work with the support of the NerdWallet editorial team to help keep us honest and show where we can continue to improve. And as we continue to put these guidelines into practice, we hold each other accountable for capturing authentic people, moments, and concepts that reflect the wide spectrum of people who turn to NerdWallet for advice.
In Conclusion
We share all this to say: this is only the beginning, and we have more work to do. We make mistakes and we’re always learning. And when we don’t live up to our brand standards around DEI, we make sure to acknowledge and find ways to fill the gaps in our awareness and process. The onus is on all of us — no matter our role or title — to uphold our values every day and raise our hand when something isn’t right.
Perhaps most importantly, we have found that this work takes both intention and vulnerability, and we will continue to have open, honest, and sometimes uncomfortable conversations. We understand that we will succeed only if we move forward with empathy, humility to admit the things we don’t know, and a willingness to learn. Because at the end of the day, as the stewards of the NerdWallet brand, it’s our responsibility to portray a world where everyone can make financial decisions with confidence.
Want to be part of a team that writes about stuff like this? Check out open roles in Design + User Experience at NerdWallet.
