Russell Norris

Wio Bank

Building a brand identity and product experience for UAE’s all-in-one digital bank

— PROJECT NAME

Wio Digital Bank


— ROLE

Copy Director

@ The Konfig


— DATE

2021

Wio is a new financial platform headquartered in Abu Dhabi. It offers a suite of services and support, from digital banking to investment tools – all powered by smart insights that help you reach your goals.


I led the project’s brand naming and verbal identity. I also co-created a typographic system that integrated our tone of voice with a library of bespoke pictograms. The result was a tool that let Wio marketers insert the best “Wiograms” straight into their copy.



Crafting the

verbal identity

First, we had to find a name for the region’s most ambitious digital bank. We generated thousands of name ideas in English and Arabic and even got some help from an AI model. Once we landed on Wio, I created the voice + tone for the branding system and for the whole product experience.

Crafting

the product

Once we had a verbal brand, we had to make sure it came to life in our product experience. I drove all of the UX Writing for the MVP launch of the Wio platform, from onboarding and ID checks through to account management, personalised insights, business invoicing and more.

Integrating copy + iconography with “Wiograms”

We had a gallery of 200+ pictograms and needed a way to manage and organise them. So we developed a unique tool that lets Wio designers and writers search for a pictogram, just by typing a word that might describe it. I wrote thousands of keyword tags that let the tool suggest relevant pictograms for users. When you choose the one you want, the system chooses the best colour and image format, adds the Wiogram to your copy – and exports it all as a ready-made asset.

Over 200 individual pictograms and 1,000s of descriptive search tags (written by me).