Citizens Bank: 5 Brands, 1 Design System
How I defined distinct brand identities across 5 banking segments, across multiple platforms and vendor solutions, unified by a single design system.
Executive Summary
As VP of UX Design at Citizens, I directed the brand expression for a themeable design system serving 5 banking segments: Retail, Small Business, Commercial, Private Bank, and Wealth. Each of these segments has its own audience, visual identity, and tech stack. We’ve adopted this design system across Citizens' 50+ person design organization.
Brand System at Scale
5 distinct brand identities unified by a single design system across web, native iOS/Android, and colleague-facing products
Platform Unification
Connects 22+ vendor systems into one cohesive, branded experience
I created final mockups that show brand expression across each banking segment.
Org-Wide Adoption
Design system and brand standards adopted across a 50+ person design organization
Industry Recognition
6 awards, including 2025 Innovation of the Year (American Banker) and 2025 Best New Embedded Finance Platform
The Challenge
Citizens has 5 digital banking segments, with product offerings tailored to the audience. A college student checking their balance in the Retail app has completely different expectations than a high-net-worth Private Banking client reviewing their portfolio, or a treasury professional in Commercial moving money between accounts.
To make things harder, these segments don't all live on the same technology. Commercial Banking runs its own portal that we designed and built, connecting 22+ vendor platforms into a single experience. Other segments have their own tech stacks. Regardless, when clients log in, they want everything to feel cohesive, intentional, and personalized.
With multiple platforms and vendors, how do we create a cohesive experience while giving each segment its own visual identity? More than a palette swap, each brand needed a distinct personality and a way to highlight its unique offerings. The components needed to stay the same (card, buttons, navigation, etc.), but everything else needed to shift (color, typography, radius, depth, imagery, white-space).
My Role
I owned the brand expression for Private Bank, Wealth, and Commercial Banking directly. I created the original Private Bank, Small Business, and Wealth concepts and designs, then directed the team to follow that standard. I set the visual direction for Commercial. I defined how we can apply the same theming approach to Retail, where I have strong influence.
The Segments
Private Bank
Private Bank is a sharp departure from the core Citizens brand. The standard Citizens green becomes black with a dark green accent. The design is flatter, with sharper angles and more restrained use of color. Typography is more refined. The overall feel is professional, confident, and trustworthy. The branding evokes a trusted advisor in the client’s pocket.
There are also elements unique to Private Bank that don't exist in other segments, like a dedicated relationship team contact list and an overview of the client’s total net worth. These features are purpose-built for how clients interact with the bank daily.
I ran a multi-day executive workshop that included creative sketching, then built pitch decks at different levels of detail to secure leadership buy-in and investment.
I created the original pitch deck to secure investment from executive leadership and align the design team.
I had to translate print-focused Private Bank guidelines into a digital style guide.
I created multiple concepts to gather stakeholder feedback and set the visual direction for my team.
Retail Banking
Retail is the broadest audience, and includes students, families, retirees, first-time account holders, and more. The design reflects a welcoming friendliness that you can expect from your neighborhood bank. Rounded corners, soft shadows, and a lighter, more approachable palette anchored in Citizens' brand green. The tone is casual and friendly. Where Private Bank says "we'll handle it," Retail says "here's how to do it."
Commercial Banking
Commercial serves treasury professionals managing complex financial operations for large companies. It’s the most complex from a technical perspective. We purpose-built the Commercial portal to connect 22+ vendor platforms into a single experience. Users were previously bouncing between disconnected vendor tools, each with different logins, interfaces, and branding. The design system is critical, and it's what makes it all feel like one product instead of a patchwork.
The brand expression is more restrained and structured, utilizing a visual language built for people who use the platform all day and don't want anything getting in their way.
I created some early concepts incorporating AI tools into the Commercial platform.
The designers and I created Style Tiles, then we ran a Desirability Testing workshop with stakeholders to pick the direction that best matched Commercial's brand attributes.
Small Business Banking
Small Business caters to smaller companies or where the founder or owner is often also the financial admin. They're not treasury professionals with dedicated expertise like Commercial users. They're running a business and managing its finances themselves, usually with a small team or no team at all.
Many Small Business customers also have personal Retail accounts with Citizens. These dual-account holders typically see the Retail theme but get access to business banking tools and features alongside their personal accounts. The challenge was surfacing business-specific functionality (things like managing delegate accounts and handling payments and invoicing) without making the experience feel like a different product from the Retail banking they already know.
Small Business has its own branding, but the experience had to work for someone who might check their personal checking balance and then switch to processing a business invoice in the same session.
I created an interactive prototype based on the Small Business print brand guidelines.
Wealth Management
Wealth Management is for investors of all sizes managing their portfolios.
Wealth is where the theming gets more layered. The theme changes based on the customer:
Entry-level investment customers see the consistent Retail banking theme
High-net-worth investors see a unique Private Wealth theme
Private Banking clients with wealth accounts see the Private Bank theme throughout
This way, the client’s experience remains consistent as they move from banking to their investment portfolios. The brand expression adapts based on who’s logged in, not just the product they’re using.
I designed the initial concepts as part of the original pitch.
I mocked up how we could apply different themes to the Wealth experience.
How the System Works
The segments don't all share a single codebase, but they share a design system. The design system is what creates coherence across technologies that would otherwise feel fragmented. A card displaying checking account info uses the same structure in Retail, Private Bank, and Commercial, even though those products run on different platforms. The theming layer adds unique elements that shape the segment’s personality.
The goal was to let each segment shine without fragmenting the experience. Build the components once, theme per segment, and let each audience feel the product was made for them, even when the technology behind it differs.
What This Required
Setting the creative direction for Private Bank: When I started, we had a limited, print-focused brand guideline for Private Bank. We had to define what this new segment would look like for the first time in digital. I created the original concepts, established the visual standards, and directed the team to build against them.
Making fragmented technology feel cohesive: Commercial Banking alone connects 22+ vendor platforms. The design system had to be strong enough to create a unified experience across technology that 3rd-parties hadn’t built to work together. The brand expression layer is what makes a user feel like they're in one product, not bouncing between sites.
Making the case for segment-level brand expression: It would have been easier to ship one look across all five segments. I had to demonstrate why that wasn't good enough and build the system that made per-segment theming practical rather than a maintenance headache.
Directing across segments I don't directly own: I own Commercial, Private Bank, and Wealth, and have a strong influence over Retail and Small Business. That means working with other design leads and stakeholders to maintain consistency in the theming approach, even when I'm not making every decision myself.
What I Learned From This Work
Brand expression and efficiency aren't in conflict, even when the technology is a mess. The instinct in a large organization is to standardize everything under one color, one style, and one set of components that all look the same. It's easier to build and maintain, but it's wrong for users with fundamentally different relationships to the product.
A Private Bank client logging in to see their portfolio should not have the same visual experience as a college student checking their balance. And a treasury professional using a portal that stitches together disparate enterprise-level tools shouldn't show the seams.
The design system is what makes it all possible. We could share the components, but not the brands. When the underlying technology is fragmented, the design system is sometimes the only thing that creates coherence for the user.