Loan Simply

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Participation: Concept & Design
Project Type: Branding
Released: Dec 2017
Worked On At: Union

Loan Simply is a Charlotte based mortgage lending company who offers customers the lowest rates, ability to cash out equity, and refinance into shorter term mortgages. As a newly establish lending agency in the Charlotte area, Loan Simply approached UNION to help give them a clean and simple indentity that would help showcase what they did while also making them standout in an industry that is very visually repetative.

Design Approach

When I was asked to join in on this project the wordmark for Loan Simply had already been narrowed down however it still needed a little massaging and conceptual exploration.

Inital comps for Loan Simply involved a word mark with a supplmentary icon. The client did not like this approcch. After a few discussions I was able to narrow down that Loan Simply was really looking to have the icon instgrated into the lettering of their branding.

Loan Simply’s request to initally was to use letters within the name to creat an icon. This however proved to be an impossible feat. Examples provided by the client letters that lent themself to the use of visual manipulation, concept and readability. These were all things that were not avabilable in Loan Simply’s name. Early attempts to manipulate letters for icons mostly lead to missleading word breaks - Lo Nsimply, L-An Simply, Loans Imply. Added into this problem was the lack of imagination that came with the very narrow conceptual oppertunites. An “S” as a dollar sign, an “n” as a door, an “l” as a checkmark. All of these options conceptual missed the mark yet my hands were tied; too much manipluation would stray from the letter form and make it illegable.

One of the few letters that offered a glipmse of hope was possibly turning the “A” into a roof, however this created our readablity issue - Lo An Simply. However this did start me down the path to a suitable solution. At this point in the project I was about 10 comcepts and about 70 logo interations deep, but the light at the end of the tunnle was starting to get bright.

The solution was starting to be come clear. The iconography needed to be pulled out of the owrdmark, but needed to have interation with the letters. Reserecting the roof concept. I opted to make a play on the height of the second L as if it were a chimny and creat a ‘simple’ set of lines to give the wordmark a roof.