Athena are Australia’s newest home loan lender, offering great value in a refreshingly up-front and innovative way.

The challenge

Despite developing a robust brand strategy and a punchy tone of voice by The Definery, Athena’s journey towards a new visual identity was a little stop-start. Over a period of 12 months, they hired a number of design agencies who produced several concepts, however none of them quite hit the mark. While the designs were many and varied, there was a disconnect between the existing brand strategy and the look and feel. Whereas the brand strategy was provocatively different, the designs felt too safe, static and conventional. 

At its heart, Athena’s new visual identity needed to be a perfect evocation of the bold new brand strategy — not just a pretty looking series of designs. 

So Athena took the brave step of throwing everything out, and starting again with a clean slate.

The brief

We were tasked with creating a new logo and visual language that brought Athena’s brand strategy to life. It had to scream ‘ATHENA IS THE GAME-CHANGING GODDESS OF GOOD STUFF’ by being transformative, bold, human, free-flowing and different.

Our approach

With a fixed launch date, we knew we had to approach this project in a different way. So we set up a series of ‘agile’ bi-weekly meetings where we presented our concepts to the core executive team. This enabled us to make super quick decisions on the fly, allowing us to fast-track our deliverables without losing quality.

Once we established our engagement model, we fully immersed ourselves in Athena’s brand, products, and the wider industry to create a detailed visual audit.

Next we created a simple set of design principles based on the existing brand strategy and tone of voice. We used this as both a practical guide to help shape what we did, as well as a rational platform to gauge our ongoing success.

From there we developed a series of conceptual prototypes that brought the brand to life. Each prototype was built around an original logo concept, and included digital, stationery, and adverting examples.

Lastly, we clarified everything and created a series of rules and guidelines to help Athena and their partners create, and govern their brand.

The result

Over an intensive five-month period, we delivered a brand new identity and accompanying visual language that propelled Athena into the big time, enabling them to generate over $345 million in applications in just under a week after the launch.