Given the extra information about financial services sector, sorry, but I’d say neither have the right feel.
I cut my teeth in design for the financial sector, designing Annual Report and Accounts, bid documents, etc, etc. Granted it was a two or three decades ago now, but the financial sector, I can’t image, is all that changed. I worked, at the time, for a well-known agency based in the City of London and we dealt with many of large City banks and institutions. Largely speaking, their idea of bohemian was a purple silk lining in a pin-stripe suit.
Their entire sector is based on market confidence, so they need to be seen as trustworthy. They liked to think they wanted their designers to be creative and innovative, but there was only so far you could take ‘left field’. They were, in turn, dealing with people investing vast sums of money and these people need to know their money is safe.
Sorry, if I am over-egging this particular point, but if it is these people you are wanting to get business from, you need to appeal to that mentality. They need to see you as an ever so slightly outré version of themselves. Anything too whacky will have them running for the hills. You need to be the safe option who can talk to their clients. They liked the idea of going to offices and studio spaces that were nothing like theirs and were exciting and different, but the public face of their designer’s brand needed to be far more conservative – again this is just my experience and it is ‘back in the day’. The Thatcher years, when the City was about as conspicuously bullish as it gets. Pin-stripes, Porsches and Bolly.
The retail financial market can be a little more free with ‘bright and colourful’, but the financial markets themselves don’t really do whacky – and by whacky, I mean, not pin-striped.
I had a quick look at your existing site. Honestly, with some refinement and sleek polish, I’d say where you are now is closer to where I’d position myself to speak to financial boardrooms. Your mood boards feel all too consumer, retail, customer-facing. A bit too chummy ‘everyman’. Shiny, happy people. In my experience, tradition, heritage and security (with red shoelaces), would carry more weight.
Remember, these are only my observations from working with the sort of people I imagine you are looking to attract. Hope it helps – for what it’s worth.
By the way, I can empathise, designing for yourself is a nightmare, which is why I still don’t have a website. Thankfully I have been lucky enough that work has come via word of mouth, but I really should have my own site. It’s been my New Year’s resolution for the last 15 to get one done. This year…!!
