Logo

The Starship is our most recognizable brand assets. The preferred approach is to use The Starship logo by itself, unlocked from the wordmark. This allows flexibility to present The Starship with greater prominence while maintaining a considered, open and modern presentation.

Download Logo

Safe Zone

The logo’s safe zone is equivalent to the height of the “S” on all sides.

Avoid

The logo should not be misrepresented, modified, or added to. No attempt should be made to alter the logo in any way. Its orientation, colors, and composition should remain as indicated.

Color

Rocket Red is our primary brand color. It represents the fresh distinctiveness of our brand and stands out from more traditional entertainment palettes.

Deep Space is our secondary color and is used over green.

Dynamic Gradient is used to create depth and bring a cinematic quality to designs.

Typography

Typography is our visual voice. Bringing range, nuance and attitude to what we have to say. StellarFi uses the Work Sans type family in all applications.

Download Work Sans

Type sizes, line spacing and the distance between the text hierarchies can be freely selected. Create intentional contrast and type hierarchy.

Regardless of alignment, keep heads together. Space between heads and body copy can be variable.

Illustrations

Our illustration style builds off the shape of the Vessel.
Adding a little spice (and cute characters) to our communications.

Hero Illustrations

Spot Illustrations

Layout

Writing Style

StellarFi’s voice is intelligent, encouraging, and approachable all at the same time. StellarFi is a mentor taking you under their wing. The StellarFi speaker has been where you are and they’re here to guide you through it too.

Who We Are

We are approachable. We are understanding and non-judgemental. We treat you like an equal; we understand where you’re coming from because we’ve been there, too. Unembellished, but not overly casual. We are lighthearted and irreverent, but not silly.

We are wise and experienced. We are confident, but not cocky in our knowledge. We make things easy to understand, and believe it’s unnecessary to speak formally to demonstrate our intelligence on financial topics.

We are encouraging. Financial health can often be a taboo topic. We are your cheerleader to reach financial freedom and overcome any fears or anxieties you may have when approaching your finances.

Personifications

If StellarFi was a person in your life: Your favorite teacher, mentor, or professor who helped you find yourself, find your confidence, and find your way. They made learning fun and engaging. They made you feel important and encouraged you to shoot for the stars

If StellarFi was a dog breed: Golden Retriever – loyal, smart, kind, capable, uplifting

If StellarFi was a celebrity: A blend of Ryan Reynolds and Keaunu Reeves – approachable, witty, respectful, professional, humble, kind

If StellarFi was a TV mom: Rainbow Johnson from Black-ish – nurturing but fun, guides without being pushy or nagging, light-hearted but pragmatic

If StellarFi was a TV dad: Jack Pearson from This Is Us – passionate, supportive, hardworking, genuine, positive, ambitious

Grammar and Mechanics

This guide is written to keep consistency across all written content across StellarFi’s various communication channels. We generally use the AP style of writing, with some exceptions. If you have any questions about these rules, please email our Head of Marketing at vicki@stellarcred.com.

General Guidlines

We write for everyone. We believe financial literacy should be accessible by all, therefore all written content should be easy to understand and provide little to no further explanation behind what’s written. We use contractions and emojis to keep the tone friendly and welcoming.

Avoid jargon, slang, and fluff. We use short sentences and keep things concise. We avoid jargon, slang, or fluff that would otherwise make things difficult to understand.

Do no harm. Language is a tricky thing and can be weaponized in subtle, often unintended, ways. StellarFi makes an effort to select and retain writers with a foundational understanding of inclusive, diverse, empowering language. However, the intersections touched by the words we use are complex and abundant. For that reason, please refer to guides like
this when writing about unfamiliar social topics or populations, or when referring to marginalized groups of any kind.

Consistency is key. All headers, subheaders, paragraphs, sections, etc. should be consistent. The format should be easy to read and predictable.

Use active voice. The subject of the sentence does the action.

For example “Your credit score is improved by StellarFi” is passive voice. “StellarFi improves your credit score” is active voice.

Capitalization

Words are all lowercase unless a specific rule says to capitalize them, such as proper nouns like specific state names in the United States.

Common nouns should not be capitalized unless they are used as part of a proper noun name.

Job descriptions should not be capitalized, but formal titles should.

We are a public benefit corporation. In rare cases, this can be capitalized to highlight the significance of this lesser-known business type. General rule of thumb is to capitalize when it’s part of a headline and to use lower-case when including in body copy.

Directions and seasons are only capitalized when used in a proper name.

Headlines

Use title case for titles and major headlines by capitalizing all words except for articles and prepositions. Use sentence case for remaining copy and subheadings.

• This is How You Capitalize a Title in Title Case.
  And this is how you capitalize a subheading in sentence case.
• Words that should not be capitalized in sentence case include:
• Articles (a, an, the)
• Short (fewer than 5 letters)
• Coordinating Conjunctions (and, but, for)
• Prepositions (at, by, from, etc.)

Numbers

• Use numeric form for credit scores, ages, and numbers that correspond with data within the app.
• For example, “Your score has reached 650!”
• For all other numbers, use AP Style guidelines:
• Numbers less than 10 are spelled out fully.
• Numbers greater than 10 are expressed with numerals.

Dates

• Follow this format: Monday (day), July 1 (month + date), 2018 (year).
  Days: Omit st., th., rd., and th. Ex: July 1, not July 1st
  Months: Abbreviate Jan., Feb., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov. and Dec. when writing out a specific date. Spell out names of months when not used to indicate a specific date. Ex: Aug. 3, 2018.
  Years: Use numerals rather than spelling them out. Ex: 2018, not twenty-eighteen.
• Example: on Aug. 15 2022, it will be Friday!

Time

• Don’t use colons for times on the hour.
• Ex: 3 p.m., 8:30 a.m.

Currency

• When writing about U.S. currency, use the dollar sign before the amount. Include a decimal and number of cents if more than 0.
• $20
• $19.99
• When writing about other currencies, follow the same symbol-amount format:
• ¥1
• €1

Percentages

• Percentages
• For example: Marketing copy would be formatted “Grow your credit score by 15%!” and blog copy would be formatted “Only 66 percent of adults have good credit scores.”

Punctuation

Periods

• Periods go at the end of a sentence, after a single space between sentences.
• Periods go inside parentheses when a parenthetical statement stands alone.
• Periods go outside parentheses when a parenthetical statement is within a larger sentence.
• Question marks follow the same rules as periods.

Exclamation Points

• For emails, social media captions, advertising, and web copy, it’s best to limit exclamation points to one per paragraph. For more exciting announcements, more exclamation points may be acceptable. Use discretion; there’s a fine line between sounding excited and sounding like a lunatic.
• Do not use exclamation points in negative transactional messages such as: warnings, expiration, deletion of accounts, etc.

Commas

• We are pro-Oxford comma
• For example: “Bridget enjoys soccer, cooking and petting dogs” makes it appear that Bridget likes to cook and pet dogs. With an Oxford comma, it would be: “Bridget enjoys soccer, cooking, and petting dogs.” Bridget is much less creepy thanks to an extra comma.

Quotation Marks

• Use quotation marks for quotes, words, letters, or short titles of work.
• Periods will always go inside quotation marks unless they are part of a parenthetical statement that is within a larger sentence.
• The dash, semicolon, colon, question mark and exclamation point go within the quotation marks when they apply to the quoted matter only.

Semicolons & Em Dashes

• Use em dashes instead of semicolons and hyphens in long sentences. Keep in mind that for SEO purposes and for readability, sentence structures should be as simple as possible. If you find yourself using em dashes, look for ways to break the sentence into shorter segments instead.

Ampersand

• Ampersands should not be used in place of “and” unless absolutely necessary to fit certain copy or size restrictions.
• Otherwise, they should only be used when part of a brand name.

Emojis

We use emojis in our communications as we believe they can lend personality to written copy and help establish tone and nuance.

• All emojis at the end of a sentence should follow after the preceding sentence’s punctuation.
• For example, “Time for lift off! 🚀”
• When you’re writing a single phrase, the emoji can replace the punctuation.
• For example, “Great job 🎉”
• We use emojis internal communications, in social media captions, emails (including subject lines and headers), and push and SMS notifications. We do not use emojis in blogs or within dense website copy.

Blog Post Guidelines

Quality over quantity. Content should bring value to the reader. Blogs should read like a conversation with a real person, not like a textbook. Add humor where appropriate. When speaking of a defined population, seek quotes and experiences directly from people within that population. Provide definitions and do not assume that the audience has a working knowledge of credit basics.

Terminology

Refer to StellarFi users as members and our various service levels as membership plans
Refer to customer service as Customer Success

Add a ® symbol after FICO®, TransUnion®, Experian®, Equifax® etc

Do not refer to StellarFi as an “app” until a mobile app is available
Do not refer to “downloading” StellarFi until a mobile app is available

Do not refer to StellarFi as a bank or a lender
Do not insinuate that we give members a line of credit, trade line, etc
Instead: StellarFi appears on credit reports as a “credit account” with a “payment cushion that optimizes credit utilization”

StellarFi payment card: Do not refer to it as a debit card, credit card, or anything linking it to a bank account to avoid insinuating that we are a bank

Taglines

“The bills you pay should pay you back”
“Prepare for liftoff”
“Build your credit just by paying your bills”
“Build credit without building debt”
“You deserve Stellar credit”
“StellarFi is the first and only app that reports an unlimited amount and variety of bill payments directly to TransUnion®, Experian®, Equifax®, quickly building a positive payment history for our members”