Project Title:
Nirvana.money Design Internship
Nirvana.money was the latest fintech by Bill Harris, founding CEO of PayPal, Intuit and more. Its mission was to design a better way for people to live healthier, happier financial lives by creating an accessible credit card product to radically simplify money.
As a design intern I had the opportunity to participate and learn how to build a company from the ground up and to wear many different hats. Sadly, as with many startups, Nirvana had to make the decision to close its doors. Despite this, Nirvana gave me a huge learning experience, I was able to put my creative side into work and experiment in the many different design decisions companies need to do when creating a new brand. From participating in the UX design decisions of the App to designing the credit card look, to the packaging and unboxing experience. My key take away was that even if a start-up fails, (which most do), you will always succeed because you’ve learned, grown, and had fun.
The project below was one of my favorites in my time at Nirvana.money. It involved taking photographs of hands holding cards, designing the graphics for the looks of the cards and creating mockups from scratch in Photoshop. Scroll down to learn more about this fun project!
Roles /
-Photographer
-Designer
Tools /
-Adobe Illustrator
-Figma
-Adobe Photoshop
-Canva
Year /
2022
Photoshoot:
The first step was to do a photoshoot of blank cards being held or positioned with other elements. For this I used a canon EOS Rebel camera, foldable photo box, screen color backgrounds and lighting.
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All of my hand models were coworkers from different teams at the office.
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Playing cards were one of the elements used because one of the app features was the money game that involved a card game to win rewards.
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From over 200 photos taken a final 20 were selected for edition.
Additionally to the Nirvana card, one of the ideas that came out in our design meetings was that customers will have the option to change the card color by using skins. To showcase this I created 4 different color skins in Adobe Illustrator that I will then incorporate into the photos of the blank cards. I also designed the card chip, using a gray color gradient to give it a more realistic look.
