CLARK App — redesigned Digital Insurance Wallet screen
CLARK · 2025–Present

Reimagining the CLARK App — Product, Brand and AI

A complete redesign of CLARK Germany's onboarding and Digital Insurance Wallet — brought to life through a new visual language, a custom AI-generated 3D icon system and fully AI-created brand ambassadors.

Company
CLARK
Industry
Insurtech
Role
Global Head of Creative
Scope
Product · Brand · AI Production
The Opportunity
Insurance is a product people avoid thinking about. The redesign had to make it feel approachable without making it feel trivial — and the product experience itself had to do some of that brand work.

The challenge was specific. The Digital Insurance Wallet needed to communicate complex portfolio information clearly — at a glance, without explanation. The onboarding needed to earn trust at the moment customers hand over something personal: their existing contracts, their gaps, their financial exposure. That's not a moment for generic design.

My mandate was to define the visual direction for the rebuilt product, lead the creation of the AI icon system and brand ambassadors, establish the AI-native production workflow, and work directly inside the product process — with Product Design and Engineering — to make sure brand wasn't applied at the end, but integrated from the start.

Product Scope

What Changed

The Digital Insurance Wallet is where customers form a long-term relationship with CLARK. A customer who understands what they have, what they're missing, and what they could optimise is a customer who stays and engages. That's the commercial logic behind rebuilding the wallet from the ground up — and why the visual design decisions that shaped it were never cosmetic.

The rebuild covered the full onboarding journey — from registration through to first meaningful engagement with the wallet. Smarter contract organisation replaced the existing portfolio view, making it easier to see what was held and what was missing. A personalised Insurance Portfolio Score gave customers a clear, actionable read on their coverage status.

The rollout was progressive and A/B-tested — changes validated incrementally with real user data before full deployment. Brand integration ran in parallel throughout, with every visual decision made inside the product constraints, not around them.

CLARK App — onboarding screens CLARK App — Digital Insurance Wallet screens
Project Scope
Brand inside the product
Not applied at the end as decoration — integrated from the start, shaping navigation, hierarchy and trust at every screen.
One icon system, every category
A custom 3D library built to make abstract insurance types immediately recognisable. Designed for the product grid, adapted for CRM and marketing.
AI as infrastructure, not experiment
The production workflow was rebuilt around AI from concept to adaptation — expanding the team's output without expanding headcount.
Creative Direction

A Brand Experience,
not a Visual Layer

Before, brand was something that arrived at the end of the product process — a colour palette applied to a finished screen, a logo placed in a header. The result was a product that functioned well but felt generic: nothing in the visual experience communicated that this was a specific company with a specific point of view about insurance.

The shift was to make brand do product work. When a customer opens the wallet for the first time, the icon system should tell them instantly what each policy category is. The typography hierarchy should guide them without instruction. The visual language should make a complex portfolio feel manageable, not overwhelming. That's brand integrated into the journey — not applied on top of it.

01
New Visual Language
Depth and hierarchy were the two organising principles. Colour moved from broad background application to precise functional use — signalling status, action and priority. Typography was set at a scale that worked at mobile resolution under real conditions. The sense of dimension came from considered layering, not decoration.
02
Bespoke 3D Icon System
Insurance categories are abstract by nature. Health, liability, household — they're concepts, not objects. The icon system gave each category a distinctive 3D visual identity, built to the exact dimensions of the product grid and consistent enough across the library to make the wallet scannable at a glance.
03
AI Brand Ambassadors
Fictional characters, defined with the same rigour as a real casting brief: demographic, personality archetype, lifestyle, how they carry themselves, what they communicate. Directed, not generated. The same personas appear in the app, in CRM, in paid — treated as real talent across every channel.
04
AI-Native Production
AI embedded at the start of the process — in concept exploration and visual world-building — not bolted on at the end. This changed the quality of decisions made before a single production asset was committed to, and expanded creative output without expanding the team.
CLARK 3D icon system — full library overview
3D Icon System

Built for Clarity.
Designed for CLARK.

Insurance categories are abstract. Health, liability, household, legal protection — these are concepts, not objects. When a customer looks at their wallet, they need to instantly understand what each policy is and where to navigate. Generic iconography wasn't the answer; a system built specifically for CLARK's product was.

Strong AI output still required a trained eye. Consistency of light source, shadow depth, material quality and scale within the product grid weren't defaults — they were decisions made and enforced across every icon in the library. System thinking meant establishing those rules early and holding them through every round of generation and refinement.

A consistent 3D language across all categories creates visual hierarchy and makes the wallet scannable — customers orientate themselves without needing to read labels first
The same icons work across the wallet, CRM emails and search results — recognisable in every context because they were built as a system, not a set of individual assets
Adding a new insurance category means generating a new icon within the established system — not briefing an external studio and waiting weeks for delivery
CLARK 3D icon — home insurance
CLARK 3D icon — lifestyle
CLARK 3D icon — car insurance
CLARK 3D icon — health insurance
CLARK App screen
CLARK App screen
CLARK App screen
CLARK App screen
CLARK App screen
CLARK App screen
CLARK App screen
CLARK 3D icon — accident insurance
Brand Ambassadors

People Who Don't Exist.
But Feel Real.

Stock photography was the default — and it showed. Generic, off-brand, impossible to use consistently across three markets and multiple product contexts. Every time a new email or campaign needed imagery, the brief started from scratch and the result looked like a different brand. The AI ambassador approach solved all of those problems at once. They were not photographed. They were directed.

A traditional casting brief defines demographic, personality archetype, lifestyle indicators, how a person carries themselves, and what they communicate to the viewer. That's exactly what was written for these characters. Same creative rigour. No location, no crew, no rebooking.

Consistent identity across every touchpoint. The same character in the app, in the Day 0 email, in a paid social ad, in a CRM re-engagement flow six weeks later. Genuine brand continuity — not coincidental visual similarity.
A production model, not a shortcut. No location, no crew, no talent contracts. The constraint forced a more systematic approach to character definition and scene construction — and produced a more coherent result than traditional shoots had.
Built to scale. New market, new seasonal moment, new product context — no rebooking required. For a brand operating across DE, UK and CH, that flexibility is structural, not a nice-to-have.
CLARK AI brand ambassadors — all personas
AI Lifestyle Photography

Reimagining the Brand Photoshoot

Once the brand ambassadors existed, we could build a complete visual world around them. What AI-generated lifestyle photography actually unlocked was specificity: seasonal contexts without seasonal shoots; different markets without different talent; and product-specific scenes — someone checking their insurance wallet, comparing policies, acting on a recommendation — that would be nearly impossible to art-direct in a traditional shoot because they require showing a digital product inside a real moment. That intersection is where AI made the difference.

CLARK CRM — Day 1 demand check
CLARK CRM — Day 3 Wallet Empty
CLARK CRM — Day 1 Wallet empty
CLARK CRM — Day 3 demand check
CLARK CRM — Mandate Accepted
CLARK CRM — Registration Confirmation
CLARK CRM — Success
CLARK CRM — Day 5 no demand check
In Motion

From Brief to Screen

This video brings the visual world into motion — the ambassadors, the brand language, the product aesthetic — assembled for the new onboarding campaign launch. Everything you see was built inside the AI-native workflow.

Creative Process

AI at Every Stage,
Not Just the Last

The traditional creative model adds AI at production — generating a final image, retouching a photograph, resizing an asset. This workflow embedded AI at the start of the process, in concept exploration and visual world-building. That changed the speed and quality of decisions made before a single production asset was committed to — which is where most creative waste actually happens.

The consequence was straightforward: the team could explore more territory, kill weaker directions faster, and arrive at better creative decisions with less sunk cost in any one direction.

Concept Visual world-building at the AI stage means establishing a creative direction before any production asset is touched. Fewer rounds of feedback further down the process because the big decisions — tone, palette, character, atmosphere — were already tested and resolved.
Generation Brand-trained image generation and 3D rendering produced the raw material for the icon system, ambassadors and lifestyle photography — at a volume and speed that made genuine visual exploration possible, rather than defaulting to the first workable idea.
Iteration Multiple rounds of AI-assisted refinement — upscaling, detail enhancement, consistency checks across the system — brought outputs to production standard without the back-and-forth of a traditional retouching brief.
Art Direction AI expanded the range of what could be explored; human judgement determined what was right. In practice that looks like generating 40 variations of a character's expression and selecting the one that carries brand authority without feeling cold — a decision no prompt can make.
Adaptation Finished assets were adapted for product, CRM, social and paid through the same workflow — the same characters, the same visual language, reformatted for each context rather than recreated from scratch each time.
Cross-Channel

From Product to CRM

The onboarding journey is where CLARK forms its relationship with a new customer. The first 72 hours determine whether someone engages with the wallet, completes their profile, and starts to see the product's value — or doesn't. The CRM series was designed to extend the product experience into that critical window, using the same characters, the same visual language, and the same sense that CLARK is paying attention.

A customer who sees the same ambassador in the app welcome screen and in the Day 1 email isn't consciously noticing the continuity — they're experiencing it as reliability. That's brand doing its job at product depth, not as a campaign layer applied on top.

CLARK CRM email header — Day 1: 'Bedarf checken & Lücken entdecken', with a CLARK ambassador on a blue sofa and a 'Bedarfscheck starten' call to action
CLARK CRM email header — Day 5: 'Dein erster Schritt: Deine persönlichen Empfehlungen', ambassador against a deep-blue backdrop
CLARK CRM email header — Day 3: 'Zahlst du zu viel? Jetzt starten statt warten!', two ambassadors and a 'Vertrag hochladen & Sparpotenzial prüfen' call to action
CLARK CRM email header — Day 3: 'Deine Versicherungen. Voll im Griff.', a hand holding the CLARK-blue phone with a 'Dein Wallet öffnen' call to action

A selection of CRM email headers from the onboarding sequence — the same ambassadors and visual language carried from the app into the first days of the customer relationship.

Paid Social · Meta

One Brand,
Every Placement

The design system that runs through the app carries straight into performance marketing. A library of Meta creatives — built for feed and story placements — puts the redesigned brand to work on acquisition, focused on CLARK's high-margin lines: private health, disability cover and private pension.

Each execution is purpose-built for its format and product, but unmistakably one brand — the type, the deep blues, the 3D language and the ambassadors all drawn from the same kit.

Meta feed ad — 'Schlecht versichert?' CLARK app-download creative, a hand holding the CLARK-blue phone
App Download · UrgencyFeed 4:5
Meta feed ad — GKV vs PKV price comparison for private health insurance
Private Health · GKV vs PKVFeed 4:5
Meta feed ad — 'Work-Life ohne Balance?' disability insurance (Berufsunfähigkeit), 3D hand scene
Disability · BerufsunfähigkeitFeed 4:5
Meta feed ad — CLARK card for the privately insured, 'Bis zu 63 % günstiger'
Private Health · Savings CardFeed 4:5
Meta story ad — 'Schlecht versichert?' app-download creative in vertical story format
App Download · UrgencyStory 9:16
Conversion · Landing Page

The Rentenlücke,
Made Tangible

A new landing page for Altersvorsorge — private pension, one of CLARK's highest-margin products. Built on the redesigned brand system, it opens with a quiz, makes the pension gap concrete with data, matches each visitor to the right product, and carries them to a quote.

clark.de / altersvorsorge
Altersvorsorge landing page — hero: 'Schließ deine Rentenlücke' with an interactive quiz Altersvorsorge landing page — the statutory pension gap made concrete with data Altersvorsorge landing page — 'Welche Altersvorsorge ist die richtige für dich?' product-matching tabs Altersvorsorge landing page — ETF pension benefits and the optimal pension plan Altersvorsorge landing page — 'Nächste Schritte' step-by-step next actions Altersvorsorge landing page — customer testimonials carousel

Auto-scrolling preview — hover to pause

Product Integration

Where Brand Meets UX

The alternative is familiar: creative delivers brand guidelines at the end of the sprint. The icons don't fit the grid. The typography hasn't been tested at mobile scale. The colours conflict with system states. Working inside the process from the start means none of that happens — because the constraints are known before any visual direction is committed to.

The icon system was specced for the product grid dimensions from day one — not retrofitted. The typography scale was established in collaboration with the Product Design team, not handed over as a brand deliverable. Colour application was validated against accessibility standards alongside brand guidelines, not after them.

CLARK App redesign — product screen detail
CLARK App — wide brand and product frame
Collaboration

Inside the Process, Not Outside It

This project was delivered across Product Design, Product, Engineering, Data, Marketing, CRM, Operations, Information Security, Legal and external technology partners. In a team that size, creative leadership either sits inside the process or it becomes a bottleneck at the end of it.

Working inside the process means attending sprint reviews, not just milestone presentations. It means knowing the technical constraints before committing to a visual direction. It means the relationship with Product Design is collaborative throughout rather than sequential — brief in, assets out. That's the only way brand integration of this kind actually holds up at shipping.

The Outcome
Onboarding
~40% uplift in funnel conversion. The core onboarding funnel — mandate created to accepted — set a 30% uplift target and surpassed it, with the measured uplift closer to 40% across the A/B-tested rollout. That funnel includes a legally binding mandate signature; without that required step, the conversion rate would be higher still.
Digital Insurance Wallet
Rebuilt around smarter contract organisation and a personalised Insurance Portfolio Score — so customers can see what they have, what they're missing and what's worth acting on, and engage with the product's core value.
Visual System
A custom 3D icon library covering 12 insurance categories, deployed across product screens, CRM, paid and organic social. One system, every context.
AI Production
The AI-native workflow took image production from a full day to 2–3 hours — expanding the team's output and iteration speed without adding headcount.
Reflections

What This Taught Me

Brand has to do a job, or it's decoration
On CLARK I held everything to one test: if you could delete a brand element and the screen worked exactly the same, it wasn't brand — it was ornament, and it came out. The 3D icon system earned its place because it let someone read their insurance portfolio at a glance, without labels. That's a harder standard than “on-brand,” and it's the only one that survives a product sprint review with engineers in the room.
AI's leverage is at the start, not the end
The obvious move is to use AI at the end, to produce faster. The real leverage is at the start. Generating 20 directions in the time it used to take to sketch three means you choose from what's actually best, not from what was feasible to produce. It didn't remove the hard part — taste, direction and the call on what's right still sit with a person — it moved that part earlier, where it counts. Anyone selling AI as a way to skip judgement is describing worse work, faster.
Design for the worst context, not the hero shot
Every asset had to hold up in its ugliest context, not its beauty shot. Before committing to an icon or an ambassador, the question was never “does this look good in the mockup” — it was “does it still read in a CRM email at 600px, in a 1:1 paid unit, on an app-store thumbnail?” If not, we started over. Designing for the hardest context first feels slower on day one and saves significant rework at the end. Most “brand vs. product” friction is really just this question asked too late.
Credits

Project Team

Creative Direction & AI Production
Sophie Andresen
Creative Lead
Philipp Ritter
Creative Execution
Luca Steiler & Sam Madhu

UX architecture, product strategy and technical implementation were led by the CLARK Product Design and Engineering teams.

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