Expensify Rebrand

The brand

The goal was to make the brand feel like the company actually is: playful, a little weird, and genuinely useful. Everything needed to hold up at every size, from a billboard on the highway down to a tiny app icon on your phone.

Typography

Type carries a lot of the personality. We worked with Newlyn on Expensify New Kansas, a characterful serif for the big moments, and with CoType on Expensify Neue and Mono to handle everything else. Together they give us plenty of range without ever feeling disjointed.

Color

We love a good dark mode, but the brand needed more color than that. The palette is built around Expensify green, with a clear set of rules for which colors pair together, so everything stays bold without getting noisy.

Illustration

Our 2019 Super Bowl spot with Augenblick Studios set the tone for what Expensify could feel like. We teamed up with them again to build out a whole illustrated world, from big animated scenes to the little spot illustrations that show up throughout the app.

Iconography

Icons are the smallest expression of the brand, so the details matter. Each one is drawn on a 20×20 grid and borrows the same mix of sharp and rounded corners as the type.

Brand applications

With the core pieces in place, it was time to put them to work. A small set of layouts scales from quiet to loud, which made it easy to go from billboards and social posts to conference booths and merch.

Product design

Last but not least, we redesigned the product itself. The goal was simple: using Expensify should feel as good as the brand looks.

The system

Put together, it’s a system the whole team can use to make things that look and feel like Expensify. We’re really proud of how it all came together.

Keynote

We introduced the new brand to the company at our retreat in Curaçao. Together with The Collected Works, I gave a keynote in front of more than 300 Expensifiers to walk through the ideas behind it. You can watch it below.

Credits