01 – OVERVIEW
A client-facing retirement guide for one of the world's largest active investment managers
Capital Group needed a client-facing retirement planning guide that could do something most financial materials don't: make retirement feel worth looking forward to. I designed a system pairing aspirational lifestyle photography with custom data visualizations — giving advisors a warmer, more human entry point into one of the most personal conversations they have. The challenge was making dense financial data feel like it belonged in the same space as the life it was meant to support.
02 – THE BRIEF
Lead with life, not frameworks
Retirement planning is one of the most personal conversations a financial advisor can have — and one of the hardest to make feel human. Capital Group needed a client-facing resource guide that would do more than present data: it needed to shift how clients felt about retirement. The goal was to move the conversation away from fear and complexity, and toward possibility and personal meaning.
The audience was twofold: financial advisors using the guide as a meeting tool, and their clients — a non-financial audience navigating projections and planning frameworks for the first time. The material had to work at both levels simultaneously: credible enough for the advisor, accessible enough for the client sitting across the table.
The ask was clear. Make retirement planning feel less like a risk conversation and more like something worth planning toward.
CONSTRAINTS
— Working within Capital Group's established brand standards
— Designing for a non-financial audience without oversimplifying the data
— Dense financial frameworks had to coexist with lifestyle photography
— The format had to support a live, conversational meeting context — not a read-alone document
03 – STRATEGIC APPROACH
Balance that earns trust on both sides of the table
The strategic question wasn't how to present retirement data more clearly. It was: what does a good retirement actually look like to the people who are saving for one?
That reframe changed everything. Rather than starting with financial frameworks and adding lifestyle imagery as decoration, the visual strategy was built around life first — the hobbies, passions, and moments that retirement makes possible. Gardening. Travel. Time with grandchildren. The things people are actually saving for. The financial data then entered that context as support, not as the lead.
This meant designing a visual rhythm that moved between aspirational lifestyle moments and clear, digestible data — neither overwhelming the other, each earning its place in the sequence.
Reframed from chronological to conclusion-first narrative arc
04 – BEHIND THE WORK
The core tension was balance. Financial data is dense by nature — charts, projections, and planning frameworks don't disappear just because you want the piece to feel warm. The design challenge was making that data feel like it belonged in the same space as the lifestyle photography, rather than competing with it.
Every layout decision was made in service of that relationship. Type hierarchy kept the data readable without letting it dominate. White space gave each spread room to breathe — creating natural pauses where an advisor could stop, point, and have a real conversation rather than push through to the next page. Color held the warmth of the photography without bleeding into the data visualizations. Pacing across the whole guide moved between emotional pull and rational support, so clients felt something before they were asked to think about something.
The custom data visualizations were designed specifically for a non-financial audience — legible at a glance, meaningful in context, stripped of the complexity that makes financial charts feel alienating. Each one was built to answer a single question clearly, not to display everything the data could show.
Initial concept before review.
Approved execution on stage.
05 – THE WORK
Built for the highest-stakes room in financial services
Data Visualization
Brand system depth
Lifestyle + data hybrid
Lifestyle narrative
06 – SIGNIFICANCE
Designed for a high-stakes quarterly board review across 14 global markets.
Designed for live advisor-client meetings, where the opening minutes of a retirement conversation determine whether a client engages or closes off entirely.
Capital Group is one of the world's largest active investment managers — a firm whose client relationships are built over decades. Materials that carry that name have to earn credibility from the first page, with an audience that is simultaneously emotionally guarded and financially sophisticated.
The work had to be warm without being soft, and credible without being cold. Getting that balance right in a regulated financial services context — where both the data and the emotion have to land — was the specific design challenge this guide was built to solve.
Work shown under confidentiality agreement. All client IP remains property of respective clients.