Challenge
Retirement Planning University had already achieved national scale — an adult financial education course taught by a financial advisor and hosted on university campuses across the country. The current brand felt more like an afterthought and needed to match the scale of the course. It needed a mark that felt institutional enough to belong on a university campus, but modern and approachable enough to signal that this wasn’t an actual degree program.
Approach
I designed a shield divided into four quadrants as a nod to classic academic heraldry, with two corners carrying diagonal motion stripes to suggest forward momentum and upward trajectory. The remaining corners hold a graduation cap and a key, connecting the program’s two core promises: education and financial security. A green gradient keeps the mark feeling digital and contemporary rather than stuffy. The result reads as university-adjacent without pretending to be something it isn’t.
