Habito Unveils New Phantasmagoric Brand Identity Designed by Uncommon
Habito, the award-winning mortgage company, unveils a full rebrand including a new logo, website and user experience
The redesign was led by Uncommon Creative Studio who worked in collaboration with highly acclaimed NY-based visual artist Saiman Chow — to create bespoke graphics, textures and movement inspired by a phantasmagoric aesthetic.
LOGO & ICON
Inspired by the transformational way Habito fights against mortgage hell every day — whether that’s cost, stress, time or jargon — Uncommon set about imagining and developing an alternate universe, a place where getting a mortgage is wildly easier and more joyful than ever before.
PHANTASMAGORIC VIS-ID
The phantasmagoric visual style is applied through a technique of shifting images and colourful patterns that are continually moving and changing to create a dream-like effect. If mortgage hell is a nightmare, Habito is a euphoric dreamscape.
NEW BRAND WORLD
The identity represents a beautiful badass version of heaven. Easy, beautiful and always moving forwards - the design aims to create the dream of how getting a mortgage might feel and through using continual movement the identity nods to the effortless progress you can make using Habito.
Abba Newbery, chief marketing officer at Habito said: “We loved this aesthetic the moment we saw it. The imagery and user experience at times feel like something from a dream which to me is the perfect antidote to the hell, stress and confusion mortgages can cause.
Our advertising deliberately and dramatically reflects a lot of that hell. We want people to feel like they’ve stepped away from that when they come to Habito. Our products and services have been described as out of this world. And this definitely feels other-worldly, yet designed with anyone who wants to own a home in mind.”
MERCH
Habito are sponsoring the UK’s largest skateboarding event — Skateboard England’s National Championships — taking place in March 2020.
The concept aims to instil Habito’s transformational tone of voice through a surrealist look and feel. The bold palette, featuring muted pastels and striking pops of colour, has been designed to create an ethereal environment where mortgage applicants and home-buyers can begin their home financing journey in pleasing serenity.
NEW BRAND WORLD
Modernist and clear fonts are combined with beautiful textures and hypnotic movement to produce an immersive and accessible experience as customers go through their mortgage journey. Habito’s signature winged keys feature more prominently in this new brand world, while the company’s refreshed logo now also includes a winged ‘O’ — as well as a winged ‘H’ icon.
Nils Leonard, co-founder of Uncommon Studio added: “The founder Daniel created Habito to save people from the hell of getting a mortgage. So when we were creating the Habito experience we wanted to create the most badass version of heaven. Less the trumpets and angels, a more distinctive, euphoric experience.
We built a new icon, the flying H from the existing brand assets to make the app icon more memorable and distinctive, and evolved the winged keys and the brand aesthetic to be more beautiful, moving and modern.”
Alongside the website relaunch, Uncommon have created a visual toolkit — which includes assets that make up Habito’s new brand world — such as the signature flying key, the logotype, the winged letters and coloured textures. The identity is a focused and modern evolution of the current brand assets, the new clear and simple code for the brand allows the identity to work in every media.
BRAND GUIDELINES
Artist and illustrator Saiman Chow continued: “It’s not often you come across a brand, let alone a financial services company, that wants to put so much thought and detail into creating something truly unique and ground-breaking.”
The new look and feel will also be rolled out across the entire Habito experience and will feature as part of the existing ad campaign ‘Hell or Habito’ — which has been highly recognised for its effectiveness and increasing brand awareness.
HELL OR HABITO TV CAMPAIGN
The animated disruptive dramatisations of hell will continue to shock and drive brand fame returning to screens from 3rd January 2021— whilst the Habito experience becomes more modern and distinctive in this new identity. All of Habito’s owned social media platforms as well as its stand-out merch will also be reflecting the new visual ID from this week.
The brand design brief was awarded to Uncommon, Habito’s creative studio responsible for the mortgage company’s infamous ‘Hell or Habito’ ad campaign, following its recent branding work for Coventry, the UK’s City of Culture for 2021. Habito is the nation’s Best Mortgage Broker 2020* and is the top-rated mortgage company on Trustpilot**.
CREDITS
Campaign Name: Phantasmagoric
Client: Habito
Design studio: Uncommon
Illustrator: Saiman Chow
Website build: Habito
For more information, images and interviews please get in touch with pr@habito.com
Notes to Editor
*British Bank Awards 2020
** 5,403 reviews, 91% 5* reviews on Trustpilot
About Habito
Habito is an award-winning home-buying and financing company on a mission to make mortgages easier and to transform the UK’s £1.3tn mortgage market by taking the hell — stress, jargon and unnecessary cost — out of financing a home.
Since launching in April 2016, Habito has:
- Helped more than 400,000 people better understand their mortgage needs
- Submitted more than £5 billion worth of mortgages
- Launched its own range of buy-to-let mortgages in July 2019 available through its brokerage, and via external broker partners Connect, Impact, Dynamo for Intermediaries and Mortgage for Business
- Launched Habito Plus a groundbreaking homebuying service which brings a buyer’s mortgage application, conveyancing needs and survey under one roof on January 2020
- Built an award-winning service — British Bank Awards 2020 — Best Mortgage Broker; MoneyNet Awards — Best Online Mortgage Broker 2019 & 2020
- Created a service customers love: it is the top-rated mortgage company on Trustpilot, with more than 5,400 reviews (91% at 5*)
- Achieved B Corp certified status and taken its place among a global movement of companies using business as a force for good and puts social and environmental responsibility on the same level as profit
- Raised more than £63 million in equity from some of the biggest names in Venture Capital — Augmentum Fintech, Atomico, Mosaic Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Regah Ventures, SBI Group and mojo.capital
