Exchange traded funds, or ETFs as they are known, are an increasingly popular way to trade groups of funds with the same ease of trading one fund. Franklin Templeton Investments' LibertyShares is a suite of ETFs that includes actively managed, smart beta and passive funds that span multiple asset classes and regions. Positioned as “challenger” to the already overcrowded ETF space, LibertyShares needed a bold new look to attract attention.
We offered multiple studies, exploring different ways of connecting LibertyShares to the parent brand. Once the decision was made to market it as a separate brand that is still connected to Franklin Templeton, our team created three options for the design system. For my option, I decided that the Franklin Templeton’s “arrow cursors” could be a good connection to the parent brand without being too overt. As I sketched, I applied the “push/pull” design theory with small and large arrow cursors used as framing devices bracketing the headline.
My LibertyShares wordmark clearly fits within the new system’s lexicon. In order to communicate the technical trades possible with ETFs, the two words are "trading" space through the diagonal line created by the Y. This connection creates a feeling of motion between the two words, it feels as if “Shares” has slid right into place. Extending the metaphor further, “Shares” can be seen as a verb rather than a noun, with the overlapping letterforms sharing the combined space.
LibertyShares has grown to 36 ETFs available to U.S. investors, across active, smart beta and passive strategies. The libertyQ emerging markets ETF ranked 3rd in assets raised for all new ETFs in 2016, and LibertyShares total assets under management has risen to $1.41 billion (as of July 2018). My distinctive design system contributed to this initial success. One of the most exciting parts of the rollout was to see how people responded to the brackets design that I created. They made an easy way for people to visually define something as LibertyShares, and employees from our Hyderabad campus were even photographed creating the brackets with their hands. Despite the respectable beginning, a decision was made to reel the LibertyShares branding into the parent brand, Franklin Templeton Investments.