Bringing clarity to something that should be simple.

How do you make a form people can actually complete, when the thing it describes is genuinely complicated? A mainstream brand agency would start with how the form looks – the logo, the type, the colours – but F&C had already been down that road. Their multi-product investment top-up form had recently been redesigned and, on the surface, it looked cleaner and simpler than before. But a form that looks clear and a form that is clear are two very different things, and underneath, much of the wording still left customers guessing. It's easy to assume a ‘one size fits all’ approach would work for children's investment plans, yet these forms were surprisingly complex, covering several products, each with its own rules on policy ownership, signatories and investment limits. Making something look nice was never going to fix that.

So we did the human bit, the part you can't shortcut, working through the form as a customer would. We got to grips with the requirements of each policy and its investment restrictions, and listened to the questions people kept asking when they got stuck on the old version, until we could see exactly where the journey was breaking down. From there we rebuilt the form around the person filling it in, streamlining and rationalising the content, and adding clear signposting and help notes to carry them through without a second thought. The brand came last, with F&C's colours and typography only brought in once the form genuinely worked, so it finally looked and felt part of the family, rather than a cold afterthought sent once the sale was done.

We've taken the same care across other financial services, including AXA PPP Healthcare's company health insurance applications and Legal & General's pension and life insurance forms, because the principle holds wherever a form is complicated and the customer is left to face it alone. It's an approach that stands up well beyond our own walls…our original form design for Legal & General was published in Form Design, a best practice book from Thames & Hudson.