The Client.
Summer 2023, I worked as a Design Intern for the State Corporation Commission's (SCC) Division of Securities and Retail Franchising (SRF) in Richmond. In short, SRF regulates investments in Virginia and promotes fair financial markets.
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As an intern, but also the sole designer in the SRF department, it was my role to make brochures, booklets, and other materials appealing to the public. This meant redesigning many pieces to be friendlier and easier to read. It also meant creating completely new promotional materials to explain the functions of the SCC, SRF, and everything they accomplish.
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This was challenging, as it meant I had to consume and then expel large chunks of technical financial information.
The first project I completed for SRF was redesigning internal training slides in Canva. This was a simple but useful task, as it gave me the best opportunity to reword and regurgitate a lot of information at once.
Research & First Steps.
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Research and verification were huge parts of these projects. It was important that messaging stay neutral while still providing helpful information. It was also important in making SRF look less government-corporate and more friendly, that I not cross too far over that line.
I had to learn a lot about investing, investment regulation, what the SCC does, what SRF does, cryptocurrency, and other financial terms. Then, the challenge was translating those things so that the average person could learn from the materials easily. Keeping someone's attention through seemingly boring financial jargon was a big challenge.
I was asked to create a brochure on Cryptocurrency. The audience was students who might be interested in investing. SRF wants them to be careful, be safe, and know the risks.
A Smart Investor's Guide
This is by far the biggest project I completed for SRF. Previously, a guide called "Invest in your Future" was created by an SRF member as promotional material. It was an 80+ page informational booklet on investing. However, it was dated, both design-wise and info-wise. I was tasked with re-vamping this booklet
My boss and I decided that this final style was best fit for the booklet.
The graphs and charts weren't visually interesting to read and the stock photos used didn't convey anything specific. Most were just smiling families or businesspeople.
There were large chunks of complicated information that needed to be broken up or explained through infographics.
Final Design.
Here are a few pages of the final layout, and you can download the whole file here.
