Feyi Sonubi has been Cowrywise since 2017. Since then, He has led the design team responsible for upholding one of the most consistent and recognisable brand experiences out of Nigeria, helping over 1M customers invest safely.
In this post, I share Feyi’s responses to my many questions on how he shaped design at Cowrywise + the story behind their iconic brand
Intro
Fun fact: Feyi joined Cowrywise as a Front-end engineer. At the time, there were no designers on the team. Because he could design, too, he picked up the role. In 2017, he was many things: the product designer, the Brand designer, and the Front-end engineer. Today, he is leading a design team of four people.
How was the team able to implement a successful brand refresh?
In 2019, it was just me and Hakeeb (who has now left the design team). We knew that something was missing in the Cowrywise brand. We just didn’t know what. It was when we saw Da Design’s work for Paystack’s new brand identity that we knew we needed a rebrand so badly.
In hindsight collaborating with Da Design to craft the Cowrywise brand we know today seemed really expensive. Given that it was going to take 6 months, it wasn’t part of our road map and how difficult it was to get stakeholders’ buy-in.
However, because we have founders who are design-conscious when I argued about how young we were and how creating an identity with more substance gave us a competitive advantage; that as the company grows, it would be easier to connect with customers to the Cowrywise essence, it resonated.
We gained momentum as soon as we started working with Da. The level of upgrade between the existing brand and the new draft was night and day, everybody was sold.
5 years and 1M users later, our brand is one of the most recognizable in the ecosystem. We have been able to communicate simple references of money, of investing that the average person can relate to. You don’t even need to see the Logo, you can just see something blue, a visual device, something from our pattern library and what comes to mind is Cowrywise. This rebrand has been one of the best investments that the team has made. You can find Da Design’s case study on the rebrand here
How is the team able to maintain consistent design excellence across brand touchpoints?
When people join Cowrywise regardless of your team, we have an onboarding process where we baptize them with how we do things.
It's a simple onboarding process where we take EVERY new employee, through the essence of the Cowrywise brand when we share the 30-page brand doc.
The doc outlines the need for
attention to detail,
thoughtfulness and
a sense of ownership for every piece of work that goes out.
When we were hiring, even for technical roles, we tried to find people who have that design consciousness, and taste, who are very rooted in foundations and 1st principle thinking. foundation We discovered that folks who had the solid foundations, meant that we had a strong base to build on. Therefore, layering that culture of excellence was smooth sailing from there.
New designers go through a 2nd design culture-focused onboarding where they get to understand how we design our product, how we approach design collaboratively, how we manage our design system, and some of our design ethos.
How has the team been able to hire great designers?
It’s in the little things. Regardless of who we are looking to hire, a designer or a portfolio manager, we're not going to hire the person with the most aesthetically pleasing submission.
We would hire the person who goes the extra mile to anticipate things that may not be in the brief. We would hire the person who paid attention to their presentation layout while still maintaining the essence. We would hire the person with exposure to high-quality content because it means that they can infuse and reimagine that information in their day-to-day work streams.
We tend to look out for people who know how to convince, and who know how to sell. We didn’t always get it right but over time, we have gotten better at making great hiring decisions.
What is the design ethos at Cowrywise?
We don't have a list of them. However, what we consistently try to communicate to new hires is that we don't try to reinvent the wheel.
1. We learn from others.
2. We always try to keep it simple.
3. We are open to feedback, and to moving things around.
4. Our design processes are very iterative.
5. We don’t joke with copy.
Why does the team have a “don’t reinvent the wheel” culture?
We have a very young customer base. Not everybody's as educated or as financially literate. With that in mind, we have to be very, very careful in terms of the ideas we introduce and launch. We try to learn from something that exists already. It could exist in another form somewhere but it would be new on Cowrywise.
Over time, we have mastered the art of picking ideas from different places and infusing our thoughts into them in a way that makes them better.
For us, the validation comes from knowing that some people have done something successfully.
So the question for us is, what do we learn from what they did and how can we make it better?
What is the one non-negotiable throughout the design process?
To never forget the problem. Even though we are looking for a solution, it’s imperative that we really understand the problem even before we design anything. The design solution can take 1 day or 4 weeks but the question is, do we understand the problem?
What does the team optimize for; speed vs quality?
There's usually a sweet spot. Speed is important and one thing that helps us a lot is that we don't try to reinvent the wheel. We have a design system that can help us make faster decisions without compromising quality.
Closing notes
Feyisayo is a seasoned product designer with over 7 years of work in visual and UX design. He dabbles in front-end engineering when he has the time.
If you have follow-up questions, you can catch up with him on linkedIn and twitter.
If you made it this far, I hope you walk away with actionable lessons.
My name is Lota, I started BTS as my little way of telling stories behind making - how people design and ship to the rest of the world. I wrote more about this vision in this letter addressed to makers.
So this is to all Makers. To making Something small. Something silly. Something great.
- ©️ 2024 Lota Anidi
