She Spends 2020
Illustration by Gina Lerman, 2019
This fall, the She Spends team embarked on a mission to reaffirm the values that hold She Spends together via a new website and visual identity.
Need a reminder of what those values are?
We are ardent feminists and we celebrate the diversity of our community.
We believe in the importance of transparency when it comes to money, our community and any She Spends initiatives.
We offer our community members a safe space to be vulnerable about money and life ambitions.
We promote active kindness toward others and meaningful involvement in local communities.
Site Changes
The new website reframes our content in three sections: guides, profiles and articles. Guides are where you can find tactical advice for your personal finances. Articles bring important systemic issues to the forefront. Profiles exhibit what it means to be a badass womxn in our modern world. We hope that this reorganization will make it easier for you to find the content you’re looking for.
In addition, we’ve instituted the She Spends Program. It’s simple enough. There are three parts: 1. Lose the Debt 2. Save & Invest 3. Give Back. This framing will help you find the information that you need for where you are in your financial journey.
Finally, you’ll now find our community guidelines on the site. These guidelines impact all of our interactions across social platforms and in person. Now they’re easier to find and much more accessible to our broader community.
Visual Identity
2020 She Spends has a new look that reaffirms the values that we hold dear. The new visual identity draws on the reality of She Spends; it is a weekly zine with a message. Our new colors allow our content to be the focus, with the laid back femininity that She Spends embodies. You can flip through the rebrand deck below to see what that looks like.
We’re working with illustrator Gina Lerman to bring the She Spends Program to life. We love the way the visuals turned out! Check out her portfolio site to see more of her amazing work.
In the new year, we’ll be looking for more visual artists to help illustrate the She Spends vision and initiatives. If you’d like to get involved, send an email along with your portfolio to shespends@gmail.com.
Fighting Burn-Out
We let She Spends get out of hand last year. We admit it. The content creation was too constant, the events too frequent and we got burned out. Some changes we’ve made to slow down and keep calm:
The site is no longer a graveyard of newsletter content: The weekly newsletter will include news, money diaries. Newsletter readers will receive early access profiles, guides and articles. News and money diaries will no longer live on the site, so if you want that info, sign up for the newsletter!
Community-focused events: We have an awesome community with loads of amazing womxn. We’re going to recommit to cultivating spaces that are warm, inviting and bring all of you smart cookies together.
More collaboration: See above re: our collaboration with Gina. We’re going to work at asking for help. Thanks to your contribution, we can now compensate our collaborators. Thank you.
Focus on coaching, community, and educational content: We narrowed down our focus to three C’s - coaching, community and educational content. If it’s not in there, we’re not doing it!
Drumroll Please… Zines
We had an ah-ha moment when we realized that She Spends is effectively a weekly zine. You can see it in the new visual identity, our values and our strategy for engagement.
We’re working to design a series of zines to provide you the educational content you find in our guides along with personal testimonials from our community around their experiences with money.
Got thoughts on how you deal with debt, saving, investing, career and giving back to your community? If you’d like to work with us on this project, either attributed or anonymously, reach out to shespends@gmail.com.
Wrap-Up
That’s it! That’s the big announcement! If you have any thoughts, we’d love to hear from you. Thank you so much for sticking with us. We appreciate you more than you know.
