Freely

Switching from an agency mindset to in-house meant I had to change pace. It meant keeping one eye on the bigger brand vision, while still getting assets out the door to keep the business humming. Dreaded, but also what became the most fulfilling experience about working in-house again.

First thing I did was take a look at their brand messaging and how they were marketing the travel insurance product. I refreshed the materials by leading with travel, and letting insurance play the supporting role. We began selling the adventure, the escape, and all the good stuff about travel, then landed on why having insurance just makes sense. This repositioning is what ignited every change throughout the rest of the brand. And soon enough, travel was injected into every moment.

We were essentially creating travel FOMO and inviting viewers to feel part of the brand. That's how I landed on the creative platform, "There's so much more you're yet to explore", along with the call-to-action, "Travel safely and explore Freely", and the tagline, "Take us with you".

“Explore Freely” was always meant to feel exactly that. It’s a statement that nudges you to be spontaneous and gives a sense of movement. So I brought in the incredibly talented typographer Wayne Thompson to craft a brand font and wordmark that genuinely captured that spirit.

We both agreed it was a pretty cool brand name to work with, and from the very beginning knew the ee’s needed special treatment. I started to think about animation at this point and felt like the ee's should suggest motion – smooth, fluid, with no friction holding it back. And it was important that the uppercase felt just as considered and distinctive as the lowercase, so the whole type system had its own personality.

Visit Wayne's website

There are so many nuances, tweaks and considerations when creating a brand font. It's a balancing art form in itself and I'm so grateful to Wayne's expertise for collaborating with me to bring the brand to life in lettering.

And just like that, 'Freely Bendy' was born!

Swapping the uppercase F to lowercase and linking the double e’s in the logo wordmark changed everything. Those little tweaks (along with some tightened kerning) let the logo actually live out what it means to “Explore Freely.”

Wayne pushed the icon a bit further. I kept tracing its movement with my finger and it was that motion we were trying to capture in its form. It’s more exaggerated, with a real sense of movement and flow, so when the content calls for something playful, it’s got room to move.

The logo wordmark lettering was a slightly tweaked version of the brand font, so I wanted to ensure the type system included a rule that applied the logo styling whenever the team writes 'freely' (all lowercase). Those types of mechanics encourage the internal team's adoption.

I knew it'd landed after a colleague mentioned they typed 'freely' using a different font but the ee's didn't connect.

Softening the tone and leaning into nostalgia, I sourced imagery that lands with feeling first, connecting authentically with a diverse community of experience-seekers.

Building the visual world was the part I loved most. With a passion for photography, I spent hours immersed in stock archives and sourcing photographers directly from social media to license from.

All of a sudden, the travel insurance narrative stopped feeling staged and started to look honest.

Colour then became the most instinctive way to inject travel into the identity. It was also important that the palette paired well with the elevated art direction imagery I was curating.

I wanted to replace the starkness of the previous palette by introducing natural shades as a nod to Freely's commitment to sustainability. So, I began searching for destinations where color exists in its purest form and each reference point informed the hues brought into the palette.

Every color adopts the name of the inspired destination and the overall palette feels naturally balanced and layered with brightness, warmth and energy.

Meet Nusa, the primary.

Once the brand identity started to really fall into place, it was time to bring it to life across the marketing video ads. This is my sweet spot. I love testing the elements and leaning right into the storytelling of a brand.

I teamed up with the incredibly talented Stephen Ong to explore animation treatments and shape how Freely moves and feels on screen. I also went down a rabbit hole trying to find a song that nailed the vibe. That’s when I stumbled across Joshua Bredow’s song New Earth on Spotify. Super chill, groovy-funk, and wavy guitars. It’s got that calm, unhurried energy that mirrors how Freely’s audience likes to travel.

I’d mapped out five script categories (love a framework), then found the perfect voice to bring Freely to life. Maddie became the spoken voice of the brand – not just for the ads, but for our IVR scripts too. We carried that same travel-inspired tone right through the customer experience into call-waiting moments.

Stephen and I continued to collaborate, defining how the illustrations moved. We then extended that animation work into evolving all the marketing assets, defining the entire animation guidelines.

With a brand font named Bendy, it made all the sense to adopt a bouncy playful movement across the animations to captivate the audience with play.

I’ve got this unspoken rule as a designer.

When I wrap up any brand project, every file should be clean, clearly understood and ready for the next creative to pick up and run with – no digging around, no guesswork, and absolutely no broken links. Don't get me started on correctly layering files!

That's why I created the brand guidelines in Figma. It means every marketing file links to a central design system, adopting the icons, colors, type, and elements (way too big to capture in an image). This means that any change is centralized, cascading updates across multiple files, crafting an efficient framework and collaborative system when making improvements. That's my creative mic drop.

See the Figma file here