Hebbia

design.hebbia.com/brand !!! walk with me... most modern institutional brands are 90% random stock images of skyscrapers. they either don’t have an owner of taste, or are afraid their audiences will be turned off by anything too opinionated. we’ve spent the last year challenging that assumption. studying the entanglement between finance, culture, and the arts. talking to many leaders in finance, we have come to understand that choosing a career in finance often comes with an aspiration to be surrounded by the highest craft: architecture, fashion, food, products, experiences, etc. we set out to build an identity that celebrates this pursuit. we wanted to respect the history of the institution, while being technology forward and side-stepping nostalgia slop. our research was mostly offline: visiting print magazine archives, hand-scanning buildings in fidi for material & texture, & talking to customers about design that motivates them. i think the work speaks for itself.

woke up to see hebbia design featured in @FastCompany!! thought i'd share some process for designing max. when we set out to design our harness, we had a ton of ambiguity: - is a character appropriate for finance? - should it be anthropomorphic ? - should it be cute in case it fucks up? - did it make sense for our brand? - is it going to clutter the interface? not to mention our early prototypes literally crashed browsers. the metallic inspo we took from TARS and watch design was heavyyy to process. so why chase it? it would be easier and faster to just... ship without it. our intuition said giving the experience the extra touch would pay off, and where many eng teams might've just ripped it out and moved on if it was crashing browsers—ours doubled down. early testing showed that not only was the product a massive improvement, but max gave customers a mental and visual anchor to speak to. they perceived max as trustworthy, and also loved fidgeting with it on our home page (lmao). 5 months later & here’s where we are: - retention is at an all time high - brand sentiment is at an all time high - customers refer to max by name - we have a new core element to build our product and brand upon now there’s a new set of questions: - do people in finance want an army or just one max? - will people still love it in a year? - what is the shelf life of maximalism? takeaways thus far: 1. one of the most exciting things about being a designer today is that ai flattens disciplines. product, brand, animation, & marketing can all coexist and compound user experiences in ways that were too expensive to explore even a year ago. 2. this is not revolutionary in any way, but getting obsessed with our industry, its history, and our customers let us craft something that is uniquely ours in a time where cloning is rampant and the tech industry’s conflation of efficiency and minimalism has diminished opinionated design. we’ll share a full brand case next week. cheers.