Cardinal Financial Launches New Brand

After three years of explosive growth, mortgage lender Cardinal Financial Company, Limited Partnership rebrands and launches a new website, logo, color palette, and more. The company’s vision to lead and disrupt the mortgage industry by modernizing the way home loans are obtained is fully realized in this new brand refresh. While its original logo and website served their purpose in Cardinal Financial’s formative years, the company’s recent volume spikes and rapid growth made it clear that now is the prime time to rebrand.

“Cardinal Financial is entering a transcendent period in its history. In three years, we’ve grown from a handful of people to nearly 900 employees serving the country as a nationwide lender,” Senior Marketing Brand Director Roman Vega said. “We are leveraging this opportunity to reposition the company, to create brand awareness and ultimately make Cardinal Financial a household name.”

With the launch of its new logo and website, Cardinal Financial has also developed five brand truths: Modern, Precision, Simplicity, Speed, and Transparency. “A company’s brand and the pillars behind it create a foundation for the future. Cardinal Financial is at a point in its growth cycle where aligning the internal vision with our internal and external messaging is critical for employees and customers to understand our place in the industry,” Senior Vice President of Marketing Colin Treend said.

Cardinal Financial’s new logo is a clear representation of these brand truths. “It was a very long, intense, and demanding process of taking multiple sketches, strategies, and ideas and morphing them into a united look,” Brand Designer Erica Ryan said. “But, I was able to pluck out the necessary direction that I felt was useful to establish our desire for a stronger presence. Things like, ‘It has to be modern,’ and ‘It has to deliver precision.’ I used the five brand truths to help dictate shapes and forms which evolved each sketch and idea into logo elements.”

When observing Cardinal Financial’s former logo—a red, triangular design next to a wordmark of the company’s name—it’s hard not to notice how strikingly different the new logo appears. “This was a strategic move to define those truths and to define the idea of a smooth and modern lending experience,” Ryan said.

Although the new logo is simple, the process Ryan took to arrive at this design was not. “In most scenarios, designers start working with the brand architecture and vision to create a new logo and identity for the brand. However, mixing the old look with a new vision proved to be a challenge as a means to drive this creative process,” Ryan said. “After kicking around some new ideas for the redesign of the website, I realized that our current brand couldn’t fully support our new vision. Once I sketched out new site pages and brought these ideas to life through design, I felt that we had outgrown the color palette and the logo.”

As a company evolves, so should its brand. Cardinal Financial proves this as it boldly steps out on the mortgage industry scene with this total brand transformation. “We’re excited about this change and believe that our brand relaunch will keep everyone focused on the vision of disrupting and modernizing the way home loans are obtained,” Treend said.

Cardinal Financial’s original logo:

About Cardinal Financial

We started Cardinal Financial with a passion for developing a better mortgage experience. Our proprietary loan origination software, Octane^®, is a sure advantage, but we soon found out that revolutionary technology only goes so far without revolutionary people. We place a premium on hiring talented, forward-thinking, entrepreneurial spirits who are committed, not only to reimagining the possibilities of mortgage lending, but to delivering a personal experience to every borrower every time. We take a tremendous amount of pride in our people because they’re what sets us apart from the rest. Our culture is strengthened by self-starters who look forward to coming to work every day and are willing to go the extra mile for their colleagues and their clients. Cardinal Financial is where your career meets your calling. Join us and be a part of something more than mortgage lending. For more information about Cardinal Financial, visit cardinalfinancial.com or follow us on social media: facebook.com/cardinalfinancial and @CardinalFinancial on Instagram.