Zolve

Zolve gives people moving to the US a bank account and a credit card before they have a US credit history — the thing that otherwise blocks an apartment, a phone plan, and a car for the first year. Most of the customers are students. Banking made for students was the line the whole system had to hold up.

I joined as an early team member, when there were 10–15 people — which is why the work below runs from the design system and the site through to CRM, campus programmes and the sweepstakes mechanic inside the app, rather than staying in one lane.

Scope

UI, branding, social and communication design across the mobile app and the website. The product side is an account and card dashboard: available limit, credit card and checking account as peer tabs, rewards, and a nudge stack for the onboarding steps a new arrival hasn’t finished yet.

The card tiers

Three cards, each aimed at a different point in that first year:

• Black — opulence and exclusivity. The one you show people.
• Signature — premium features that stay reachable.
• Classic — simplicity and convenience, for everyday spend.

The tiering had to survive being printed, so this ran past the screen into physical work: card faces, packaging, a booklet, and the brochure collateral that ships with them. Designing a gradient that reads as premium on an OLED phone and as premium in CMYK on a matte card is two different problems, and the second one is unforgiving.

Communication

Social and communication design ran alongside — the same type and colour system applied to launch and acquisition material, so a card someone sees in an ad is recognisably the card that arrives in the post.