Building a Brand People Trust: Meet Visual Designer Jesimiel.

Jesi has been designing for about six years, but his path into design wasn't exactly linear. He studied Mass Communication at university, having developed an interest in technology and design long before then. Before joining Raenest, Jesi had already worked across product design and a range of creative roles. At Raenest, that experience has expanded into 3D design, Blender, AI, interactive websites, campaigns and the more meticulous side of designing for a financial product used by more than a million people.

For Jesi, though, design has never been about making something look good for its own sake. At the centre of his approach is a simple principle: design is a vehicle for communication, and the best work makes the experience clearer, more useful and more memorable.

Here’s Jesi on how he found his way into design, built a recognisable brand, designed for fintech, and what he's learnt along the way.

Temi: Hi Jesi.

Jesi: Hi Temi.

Temi: How are you doing?

Jesi: I’m good. How are you?

Temi: I’m good too. Let’s get into it.

Temi: You studied Mass Communication. How did you end up becoming a designer?

Jesi: I’d always wanted to work in design, particularly designing for tech.

In secondary school, I learnt some basic coding, things like HTML and CSS. When I got to university, I started exploring design more seriously.

My roommate in my second semester of 100 level was a designer. He coded and designed, and I was really interested in what he was doing. Around the same time, my cousin had started a company, and they had design needs, so I started watching tutorials and learning more about design.

Eventually, I realised this was what I wanted to do.

I started doing design internships while I was in university, and after university, I went into design full-time. My first full-time role was at a mobility company, where I started as a design intern and eventually worked as a product designer.

So I’ve been designing for about six years now, and it’s been an interesting journey.

Temi: How would you describe your design style?

Jesi: Modern, colourful and sometimes minimalist.

Beyond functionality, I also want a design to have strong visual appeal. I like colourful things and I like working with colour, so that’s a recurring theme in a lot of my work.

At the same time, I really value minimalism. I don’t believe a design needs to be filled with a million things just because they look good.

On one of my first design jobs, my design teammate said something that stayed with me: simplicity is key.

Design is a vehicle for communicating something else. If everything is competing for attention, the message gets lost. There’s no point in creating something visually appealing if people don’t understand what you’re trying to communicate.

Temi: Before Raenest, what kind of designer were you?

Jesi: I’ve always been quite a generalist.

In one of my previous roles, I was doing almost everything design-related. We didn’t have a product designer, so I worked on social media visuals, emails, articles, websites and app screens. I was even involved in partnership conversations.

That generalist approach has always been part of how I work.

If there’s a problem and I can learn how to solve it, why not?

Temi: Was there anything specific you wanted to explore when you joined Raenest?

Jesi: Definitely 3D. A large part of Raenest’s visual identity is built around 3D, so joining the team allowed me to develop that skill further.

I wanted to learn Blender and become more comfortable creating 3D assets myself. I also wanted to explore how AI could accelerate that learning process.

AI has been a great tool for that, but it doesn’t replace actually learning Blender. I still want to understand the tools and the process. AI can amplify what you know, but you need the underlying knowledge to use it properly.

Temi: Has working at Raenest changed how meticulous you are about design?

Jesi: Definitely.

There’s a different level of responsibility that comes with working on a product used by more than a million people. Design decisions can have much bigger consequences.

You have to think about the process, the outcome and the different ways something could be used or interpreted.

Because we’re also working in fintech, there are legal and reputational considerations. You have to be much more conscious of what you’re putting out and the impression it creates.

It has made me more meticulous about the work and more deliberate about the decisions behind it.

Temi: What are two Raenest projects you’re particularly proud of?

Jesi: Raenest Recap is definitely one of them.

The interesting thing about Recap was that we deliberately wanted to do something unconventional. We looked at what major brands had done and how they turn data into something people actually want to engage with. Normally, people see data and insights, and they’re not necessarily interested. So the visualisation has to make that information more engaging.

We made Recap colourful, creative and very different from what you might typically expect from a financial brand.

I also had quite a bit of autonomy on the project, which gave me a licence to experiment. I really enjoyed that freedom,m and I loved the final result.

Raenest Exchange is another project that stands out for me. With Exchange, we went beyond creating visuals and worked on an interactive website. I already had experience with Webflow and low-code tools, but this required substantially more coding.

I used AI to help with some of the development, but I was also coding manually because I wanted to avoid that generic AI-generated website look.

We also built the I’m attending banners, where people could generate their own custom banner. That was another interesting technical challenge.

The project reinforced something I’ve learnt from working with AI: it’s incredibly useful when you know what you’re doing. It can accelerate the process, but it doesn’t replace the creative thinking behind the work.

Temi: Recap looked simple from the outside. What made it difficult?

Jesi: The timeline was very short. We had been working on another version, and then the direction changed at the last minute because we needed to launch Recap first. So we had a short window to execute the new direction.

Despite that, the final result came together really well.

That’s one of the things I enjoy about design. A project can be incredibly difficult to create, but once it’s finished, you look at the final product and think, this was worth it.

Temi: You’ve worked on projects outside Raenest too. Is there one that shaped the way you think about design?

Jesi: Lara.ng was one of my first full-time jobs, and it significantly influenced how I think about design.

Lara.ng is an AI-powered public transportation chatbot. You could tell it where you were and where you wanted to go, and it would tell you how to get there by public transport and how much it would cost.

What I valued most about that project was seeing clearly how the product solved a real problem.

I like working on products where you can see the problem being solved. Something is rewarding about building something and knowing exactly how it makes someone's life easier.

One example that has stayed with me was how we communicated walking distances.

We could tell someone to walk 50 metres, but we realised that many Nigerian users might not naturally understand what that distance meant.

So we had to decide whether to communicate it in metres or minutes. If we said ten minutes, would someone actually start a timer and count ten minutes?

We spent days thinking through details like that.

It taught me that good user experience often comes down to the details people might overlook. You have to understand how your users think and make decisions, and build from there.

Temi: So how do you keep Raenest recognisable without making every design look the same?

Jesi: The brand guide plays a big role. The brand guide Fourth Canvas created was exceptional because it didn’t just tell us what to replicate. It gave us brand pillars, themes and directions.

The brand guide starts the sentence. As designers, we get to finish it.

The system is flexible. You can experiment with colours, themes, icons, 3D objects, finishes and brightness while still maintaining the overall brand ethos.

For example, if we need a 3D object to represent something, it could be a Statue of Liberty or something completely outlandish. As long as the colour, finish, brightness and other elements remain within the visual language, it can still feel like Raenest.

That flexibility lets the brand stay recognisable without becoming repetitive.

Temi: What are the visual elements that make something immediately feel like Raenest?

Jesi: Our colours, 3D assets and typeface. Those core elements give us a strong foundation, even when we’re experimenting with the rest of the design.

Temi: What is it like working with a design team where everyone has different strengths?

Jesi: The design team is very complementary. Everyone has different strengths, and we can play to them.

If I’m working on UI design for a website, for example, I can focus on that. If I need motion design halfway through the process, I can reach out to our senior visual designer, Buzor, who specialises in motion and get his input. 

There’s also a strong sense of ownership without anyone hoarding work.

Nobody tries to keep a task to themselves just because they want the credit. If you need help to make your work better, there’s always someone you can reach out to.

Communication is also open and fast. You can message someone and get a response in less than ten minutes. If they can’t deliver something immediately, they’ll tell you when they can.

That makes collaboration much easier.

Temi: What have you learnt from working with the growth and marketing teams?

Jesi: Concept-driven thinking and strategy.

As a designer, everything you do should have a concept behind it. If you’re building a website, a core idea should guide the work.

Working closely with growth and marketing has also given me a much stronger appreciation for strategy and metrics.

There’s an umbrella goal, and it gets broken down into team goals with metrics attached so you can track whether the work is succeeding.

You’re not just doing something and deciding it worked because it feels like it worked.

There’s a clear connection between the idea, the strategy and the outcome. Everyone isn’t just moving on vibes.

Temi: What’s different about designing for a fintech?

Jesi: It’s much more product-led.

With fintech, you’re constantly communicating products and features, whether the goal is acquisition, conversion, or simply helping people understand how something works. It also requires a much higher level of attention.

When you’re designing an app screen, a mock-up or a campaign, every element matters. The copy matters. The presentation matters. You have to make sure nothing is communicating something that could put the company in a bad light.

Designing for fintech has made me much more conscious of the details and the responsibility that comes with putting something in front of users.

Temi: Does that create tension between beautiful design and functional design?

Jesi: Absolutely. It’s almost a canon event. You’re going to encounter it.

One example is when you have a list of features you need to communicate. You might want to structure everything in a particular way because it would make the design cleaner, but the information still needs to be communicated accurately.

With fintech, you also can’t always change copy simply because it doesn’t work visually.

Someone might give you a headline and subheadline that need to remain intact, even if you’d prefer to rewrite them for the design.

Sometimes you can negotiate the copy or how something is presented. Other times, you have to find a visual solution.

That’s part of the job.

At the end of the day, functional design takes priority over beautiful design.

Temi: What have you learnt about designing for people making decisions about their money?

Jesi: Avoid clutter. Minimalism becomes even more important in fintech because people don’t want to feel confused about their money.

If users don’t understand what’s happening, they get frustrated quickly. So your design shouldn’t add another layer of confusion.

Even when something goes wrong, the way you communicate it matters. There might be downtime or an issue with a partner bank, but if the communication around that problem is unclear, it can make the experience worse.

Clarity is critical when you’re designing for financial decisions.

Temi: What design mistake do you see brands making repeatedly?

Jesi: Designing without understanding the industry.

You have to understand how users in a particular industry respond to visual communication.

Finance is a good example. People don’t want clutter when it comes to their money.

There’s also a certain expectation around digital and technology brands. Users expect a particular level of professionalism when interacting with a fintech product.

And then there’s AI.

Badly executed AI is one of my biggest design pet peeves right now. AI can be brilliant when it’s done well. There are things we use AI for at Raenest that people would never know were made with AI because they’re executed properly.

But when it’s poorly done, it looks cheap and lacklustre.

That matters even more in industries where trust is important, such as fintech and healthcare. If you can’t use AI well, leave it alone. If you’re going to use it, do it properly.

Temi: What would you want your work to be known for?

Jesi: Building great experiences. Every interaction someone has with a product is part of the experience, from the first point of contact to the final interaction.

I want people to use something I’ve worked on and feel that the solution was genuinely good.

There’s a principle I really like: you know an experience is great when someone recommends it to another person without being incentivised.

That’s the kind of work I want to create. If you design an email, it should be good enough that someone wants to share it.

If you build a website, it should be good enough that someone wants to send it to a friend.

And if you build a product or feature, the experience should be strong enough that people naturally want to recommend it.

I experienced that with Raenest before I joined the company.

I had a US-based company that needed to pay me, and I’d tried other apps where the process was either too long or too difficult.

Then I used Raenest, and everything went smoothly. I could send over my account details and receive the payment.

Even before I joined the company, when people asked how they could receive money, I helped them set up Raenest and walked them through the process.

That’s the kind of experience I want to build.

Temi: What would your dream project at Raenest look like?

Jesi: I’d love to build features that people can use from anywhere in the world. Imagine someone in the Faroe Islands being able to invest in the Nigerian stock market.

That’s the kind of global financial experience I’d love to design. Someone could be anywhere in the world and still access the financial services they need.

I’d also want to be closely connected to the people using those features. Speak to users. Understand the problems they’re having. Hear how they’re using the product. Then take that information and improve the experience.

Someone might tell you, I use this to send money to my grandmother, but my grandmother doesn’t know how to access it.

That immediately gives you another problem to solve.

That cycle of building, listening, learning and improving is something I’d love to be part of.

Temi: Finally, what would you tell a young designer just starting?

Jesi: Be obsessed with learning and executing new things.

If you learn something, you should be able to do something with what you’ve learnt. But above all, keep learning. New technology is always coming out, and one thing I’ve benefited from is being an early adopter.

I’m not necessarily quicker or a better learner than everyone else. Sometimes I’m simply one of the first people to get access to a new tool, which gives me more time to learn it before everyone else catches up.

That can be a real advantage for designers. When I started designing, people were doing UI design in Photoshop and Illustrator. My first design project was in Illustrator.

Now there are so many different tools.

If you keep learning as you go, you build a range of skills and knowledge that allows you to adapt as the industry changes.

You can never really stop learning, and I think every designer should embrace that.

PS: Want more stories from the people of Raenest? Read Adedoyin’s experience at Raenest as a graduate intern, Chiamaka’s story on how she learnt to CRAFT and Cynthia’s story on her one year at Raenest.

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