Tembo is the UK’s leading family mortgage broker. They help first-time buyers get on the ladder sooner, with backing from family or smart schemes that most lenders skip over. They’re making a slow industry move faster. We helped shape the strategy, define the product, and built the brand and system to support it. They came in for a website. They left with an award-winning product.
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A calm companion as a brand
Tembo’s original identity leaned too far into fintech. It felt cold and technical, and wasn’t connecting with first-time buyers, people unfamiliar with the mortgage process.
The challenge was to create a brand that felt like a friend: approachable, knowledgeable, and on your side. One that could speak to real people, not financial insiders. Our goal was to reduce stress, ease complexity and bring reassurance to first-time buyers. With family support built into Tembo’s offering– like parents acting as income boosters– the brand needed to reflect the same sense of care, warmth and optimism.
The brand also needed mass appeal. Tembo is a young, innovative brand targeting the next generation of buyers so the identity had to be fresh and accessible, with enough playfulness to stand out in a category dominated by dry and impersonal voices.
Building on the brand’s grounded neutral tones, which provided a calming and trustworthy foundation, we introduced brighter accents of pink, yellow, and green to add energy and personality while maintaining credibility. The colour system gave us flexibility: it could be joyful and expressive when speaking to customers, but balanced and composed where trust and clarity mattered most.
"The guys got us to where we are today - branding, product, direction, they nailed it. I couldn't recommend a better studio to create a fintech company."
Eddie Ross
Co-Founder & CPO
Tembo
Happy paths all round
Their existing typeface had a solid foundation. It carried warmth and clarity that earns trust, striking a balance between personality and legibility. Rather than replacing it, we focused on refining its application by tightening hierarchy, improving rhythm, and creating more consistency across touchpoints. These adjustments gave the type greater structure while preserving the qualities that made it resonate in the first place.
The result is a brand that feels personal, helpful, and human. A product that delivers with clarity and a business that’s positioned to lead with both heart and scale. The proof? Tembo was named Best Newcomer and Best Mortgage Broker at the British Bank Awards 2022.
Futureproof design
To support Tembo’s growth, we built a flexible design system of reusable components to make consistency easier and support future expansion. Adopted across teams, from marketing to product, it now underpins every new launch. This has gone on to power all of Tembo’s new products, including their headline-grabbing acquisition of Nude, and helped position them as one of the UK’s leading platforms for savers.
@2025
