Golden1

Founded in 1933, Golden 1 is one of the nation’s largest credit unions, with over 900,000 members and $10 billion in assets. They operate 80 branches throughout California and over 30,000 CO-OP ATMs nationwide.

Over the past 5 years, Golden 1 had been looking for a digital agency to partner with, that could bring their marketing site not only up to speed but into the future, and on their limited budget. While still honoring their brand, we were tasked with the challenge of adhering to their brand style guide while developing a new digital style that we could use to build their web experience on a CMS platform in a modular design system.

I was involved from the kick-off to the QA on this project. Initially, we explored and researched the new creative directions, and translated them into mood boards, developing the modular design system from an atomic level.

Our success depended on the collaborative efforts of each team from Golden 1 and Extractable. Working with their established brand guide, we developed a modern approach to their pre-existing elements while keeping in mind how they would display on digital screens on all devices. We also made sure we met AAA level ADA Compliance, that can later be reproduced in the print space if needed.

The project timeline required the UX/UI team to work collaboratively with the visual design and development teams to develop interactive tools and a modular design system — a requirement that depended on continuous flexibility and teamwork.

When it came to the site’s marketing efforts, we blended in life goals for unique, diverse and modern demographics, making sure that they appealed to the everyday person through messaging and photography.

Process, Process, Process.

One key lesson I learned was to make sure all of the primary decision makers are involved from the project’s inception, so as avoid subsequent delays.

As challenging as it may be to convince a client that their biggest marketing, sales, and conversion portal needs to be updated, it’s an even bigger challenge to round up all of their outside vendors and make sure that those systems will play nice with the technologies that we try to implement into a secure up-to-date design experience.