Affirm: Building an Accessible Brand Experience
Timeline: September 2025 - January 2026
Graphic Design
Website Design
Visual Branding
Brand Identity
Copy Writing
Graphic Design
Website Design
Visual Branding
Brand Identity
Copy Writing
Graphic Design
Website Design
Visual Branding
Brand Identity
Copy Writing
Context
Affirm is a Maryland and Northern/Central Virginia-based private practice offering neurodiversity affirming, flexible psychological assessments, therapy, and consultations for children, teens, and adults with autism, ADHD, and other neurodevelopmental differences — in-home, in-office, or via telehealth.
Founder and licensed clinical psychologist Eleonora Sadikova came to me to launch her private practice, Affirm, as a welcoming and inviting safe space for parents and individuals seeking neurodiveristy affirming care.
Brief
Reimagine a complete brand identity for Affirm that can extend from a digital presence to physical, from public phasing, to events, and to internal documents, creating a seamless omni channel brand experience for families and individuals seeking neurodiversity affirming assessments and therapy. Foster a safe and supportive community.
Challenges
This project required balancing several important considerations throughout the design process.
The website needed to reflect industry standards for psychologists in private practice while incorporating neurodiversity-affirming language, values, and best practices. It was equally important to create a user experience that felt warm, approachable, and engaging without compromising professionalism.
Additionally, the design needed to align with WCAG accessibility standards while incorporating autism-friendly and sensory-conscious design principles to support a more inclusive experience.
Accessibility and Autism Friendly Designs
Designed with visual readability and contrast in mind, including accessible typography, spacing, and color combinations.
Created a calm, low-stimulation visual system using muted colors, intentional whitespace, and corresponding visual elements.
Established clear information hierarchy and predictable navigation to reduce cognitive load and make content easier to scan.
Used direct language, descriptive interactions, and purposeful visuals to support comprehension and user independence.
The Foundation of a Visual Brand Identity
After a comprehensive consultation on the business goals and values, we translated Affirm's point of difference as a neurodiversity-affirming practice into design constraints considering industry standards and accessibility.
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Creative Direction
After a brand audit, we determined the brand personality to be trustworthy, friendly, uplifting, and patient.
Visually, this translates into soft grometric forms, a cool, muted color palette with warm accents, and clean, simple visuals that reinforce understanding of content.
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This word map acted as the springboard for finding a symbol that balances neurodiversity, affirmation, community, and growth.
The Process:
A Brain Dump Informed Logo
After some deliberation, we agreed upon a moodboard; the visual brand organically grew from the logo, stemming from the brand values. Using a word map to structure my brain dump, I tied together words and imagery I associate with the brand’s core words without second-guessing myself.
Considering cultural ties in the neurodiverse space, I finally landed on the logo mark, blending many ideas into one, with a coordinating visual identity.
The Logo Family: Growth & Support Symbolism
Flipped and twisted from a rainbow infinity symbol, the modern representation of the autism spectrum experience appears, at first glance, to be half a brain. The brain represents the mind, tying in neurodiversity and the autism spectrum. Circles balance the brain shape to be visually appealing and tranquil. It is centered by a circle, enveloped by a circle, enveloped by another circle. This is meant to evoke growth, as it balloons or breathes from the middle.
Another meaningful layer are the three inner loops, representing a central individual with two people on either side, enveloped by the outer loop as a safe space. This ties in the ideas of unity, community, trust, support, and family. The icon loosely resembles a lightbulb to call back on the lightbulb moment of an assessment for a child or an adult, affirming life experiences and informing future growth.
Finally, the check placed at the bottom represents the brain stem as well as a check, bringing in the assessment moment and affirming experience.
The Logo Family
The logo variations support versatility in different applications, from digital to print, or from a profile picture to large-scale signage.
Affirm's primary logo and color variations: teal (the primary brand color), black, and white.
Affirm's secondary logo and color variations: Teal (primary brand color), black, and white.
Affirm's logomark and color variations: Teal (primary brand color), black, and white.
Color Palette
A muted, balanced palette designed to support Affirm’s approachable and professional visual identity across client touchpoints.
Affirm Color Palette
Extended Affirm Color Palette for Web Design: More color variations for greater flexibility, including a red option for alerts while maintaining a unified brand experience.
Design Assets
A set of visuals developed to represent Affirm’s core services. Each illustration translates a service into an approachable visual concept.
Evaluations: Pencil and Documents
Therapy: Helping Hand and Butterfly
Consultations: Lightbulb Moment & Convo
After further sketchbook exploration, I developed a set of custom service illustrations designed to create a welcoming experience for prospective parents and individuals. A key priority was maintaining a clear connection between each illustration and its corresponding content to maintain accessibility and autism-friendly design. I intentionally avoided overly abstract visuals in favor of recognizable imagery that could support quick, intuitive understanding.
During the design review, the client pointed out that the original spirals and arrows were directed downward. Given the importance of language and visual associations within the industry, we wanted to avoid an unintended association with a “downward spiral.” I revised the illustrations so the arrows and spirals move upward, creating a more intentional visual direction for the final designs.
Typography
A set of visual assets developed to represent Affirm’s core services. Each illustration translates a service into an approachable visual concept. Something about heading, subheading, and body copy.
Accessiblity Forward
Improving website accessibility partially involves creating a clear, predictable, and user-friendly interface that minimizes unnecessary visual distractions.
While general accessibility practices support readability for all users, we placed particular emphasis on creating an autism-friendly experience. Through research into typography and font selection, I found that a clean, minimalist sans serif provided the strongest foundation. I paid particular attention to letter spacing, font weight, and overall legibility to support comfortable reading and reduce visual strain.
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Figtree Bold
Primary Font
Used for the headings and subheadings in bold. Figtree is simple, playful, and chunky sans serif font. Sports friendly, curved forms, slight tapers for charm, and a simple, monolinear contructions. "Minimalist, but not stiff!"
Aa
Glyphs
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz
0123456789
2
Lexend
Secondary Font
Used for the body text. Lexend was designed to have high readability and to reduce visual clutter. It's friendly but not informal.
Aa
Glyphs
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz
0123456789
Applying the Brand to Digital
With an easy-to-navigate, intuitive experience in mind, the website was designed with thoughtful information architecture and application of the brand’s color, typography, visual hierarchy, and whitespace.
Clear messaging and visual hierarchy in the homepage hero establish the brand from the first interaction.
Intentionality is Accessibility
Selected pages demonstrate how the brand identity was applied across key touchpoints on the website, from establishing a clear first impression on the homepage hero to organizing detailed clinical service information and communicating professional credibility.
Services are organized into a scannable structure for easy navigation.
Detailed information (the service and about page) is structured into digestible sections, keeping layouts simple and predictable, breaking up walls of text, and minimizing sensory overload.
Bringing it Together
From strategy to final experience, each step of the design process and application had the business goals and ideal consumer in mind, bringing an approachable and polished private practice to life.
A Unified Front
The final system creates a consistent omni-channel experience with thoughtful typography, color palette, and illustration choices, centering around affirmation and respect for neurodiveristy and Affirm's compassionate approach to care.
The result is a unified brand presence that supports Affirm’s mission, builds trust with prospective clients, and establishes a flexible visual foundation for future growth.