Student Bank Program

The Capital One student bank program was developed in 2010—the bank opened up a handful of branches within schools around New York to help teach students the value of managing money. Students could apply to the program and intern as bank tellers in the branch as part of their curriculum. This was around the same time that Capital One was launching their new “House Style” and this project was one of the first ever to apply that look and feel.

I was working in-house as Art Director for the NY/NJ Regional Bank Marketing division at the time and our group was assigned the project. This was a unique and exciting project being the first program of its kind and because we had this new brand style to work with. The project was high-visibility, the Bank was investing a lot of time and effort to get the program off the ground and we needed to do everything we could to make sure it was well-received. We discussed our options—how do we make High School students stop and take notice of our materials? Is anyone really going to get excited about a bank branch opening up in their school? We came up with the idea of utilizing students who’d been admitted into the teller intern program at one of the schools in our marketing—it was a great way to make the materials and the message authentic and relatable—so we proposed to hire a photographer and visit the school to set up a shoot. I visited a couple of locations to scout, took some exploratory photos around the school and worked with the Project Manager to put together our proposal, which was quickly approved. We decided on one of the schools in Brooklyn for the architecture of the building. I Art Directed the one-day shoot with photographer Zave Smith, getting casual and candid photos of the student bankers and tons of shots around the school capturing textures and backdrops so we could create vibrant, authentic environments to superimpose our subjects onto. Once photo assets were delivered, my design team and I went to work piecing together the elements to create the images before passing off to our copy team. In the end we printed five sizes 12x18 (horizontal and vertical), 18x27 (horizontal and vertical) and 30x38 (vertical) on a textured adhesive which were easily hung around the schools and in the branch.