Getting a Brand in Check

Mood boards are dumb. So is Pinterest. If you look at just about any modern book on brand design, they recommend starting with a mood board and tagging items on Pinterest. Plenty of knuckleheads out there follow this advice which has led to so much blandvertising around the world.

When Ratcliff Creative was approached about rethinking the brand for CheckAlt, a US-based paper and digital check processing company (before you yawn, know that this is a $40 Billion industry), a different approach to brand development was taken.

A brandscape was developed. Rather than just a collection of images to demonstrate style, the brandscape includes high-level messaging and positioning alongside expressions of the new design in action. This approach gets the creative out of a vacuum and shows CheckAlt how pieces could work in different mediums.

Tech companies often have a bad habit of forgetting they serve people, so the visuals focus on putting people at the center of everything. The language is clever and friendly. Combined, the refreshed brand is not your ordinary fintech.