Mercury® Rewards Visa Signature® Card
During Mercury’s rebrand in 2023, I was tasked with designing the company’s next product; the Mercury® Rewards Visa Signature® Card. As a card with features aimed to promote the ability to earn rewards from everyday expenses, it aligned to the company’s initiative to enhance our cardholder’s financial freedom and user experience.
Since the development of this card happened in tandem with the rest of the rebrand, the evolution of card drafts reflect the iterations made to Mercury’s logo, brand color palette, and shape system throughout the redesign process.
While I designed over 60 cards for this project, I’m only including the top contenders for each draft.
First Drafts
In the early drafts, I was encouraged to align closely to our primary brand colors (sky blue, energetic green, and charcoal grey) as well as consider printing applications to increase the desirability of the physical card product.
Core colors, spot varnish, and texture effects were strategically chosen to beckon the user to choose our card in a moment’s decision (the ‘moment of truth’ as marketing called it).
Final Drafts
As previously mentioned, these design drafts were created concurrently with the rebrand initiative. Just as the core brand development informed card design choices, the leadership team and I were able to determine rules that influenced branding limitations (for example, that brand colors could not be mixed or used to create gradients).
For the final draft, the visual direction was refined to prominently feature new purple tones that were added to Mercury’s core brand color palette and spotlight the new shorthand logo.
Final Card
After nearly a year of designing and planning, it was an exciting milestone to hold this card in our hands and watch it usher Mercury’s brand into a new era.