HT|TC Wealth Partners
Role // Graphic Designer | Client // HT|TC Wealth Partners, Hightower Advisors, LLC | Designed in // Figma
HT|TC is a full-service wealth management practiced based out of several offices in Illinois, working under the Hightower Advisors, LLC umbrella. Focused on a comprehensive, personal, and resource-filled approach to their clients’ wealth, HT|TC required a website that matched their professional standard and shared their thoughtful resources to prospective & existing clients.
Project Scope
With nearly 40 individual pages to be designed, HT|TC’s site design spanned just over four months, with the scope changing throughout the project timeline to accommodate new improvements and developments. The process began with Katie Boucher, Hightower’s Web Marketing Lead, and Kelly LaPalio, HT|TC’s Growth Marketing Executive, refreshing, rewriting, or newly writing significant amounts of copy for the site. Afterwards, this copy was handed off to design in a formal kickoff meeting where we discussed all of the ideas, wants and needs from the copywriting stage, and I began working on the first iteration
This site was designed in Figma, with a fully-interactive 1:1 prototype created and updated throughout the process.
Iterative Process
Hightower’s web design process is structured and iterative, managed for this HT|TC redesign by Katie Boucher. Katie, myself, and our Senior Graphic Designer and Head of Visual Identity, Natalie Kirst, met with Kelly LaPalio on a weekly basis to review designs, discuss revisions, and determine which pages were a priority for the following week.
Throughout this process, the four of us also ideated on marketing and collateral plans that Kelly LaPalio had created, such as their HT|TC Wealth Stories™, and how this web material could tie into the company’s overall marketing efforts. Through an iterative ideation process, it was eventually determined that this content would exist on its own standalone page on the website, as well as reworked into a physical resource for HT|TC advisors to use with their clients.
Same Brand, New Feel
HT|TC had a solid set of brand guidelines, created by Natalie Kirst, that did not undergo any changes or modifications during this web redesign. Rather, we focused on utilizing their existing brand and realigning the website with it, focusing on selective use of color, clean lines and best practices for web design, and refreshed, highly intentional imagery to improve the visual aesthetic of the site within the same brand parameters.
Perhaps the most important visual aspect of this site’s redesign was the aforementioned imagery, which remained a core focus of the HT|TC team throughout the process. As a wealth management practice, one of the most significant aspects of the business that they can communicate to clients is what their future would look like when partnered with HT|TC. It was very important to the team that this future seemed positive, bright, natural, comfortable, diverse, and joyful. Therefore, we emphasized imagery of a wide breadth of client types living a happy, well-managed life, and leaned away from the corporate, serious imagery that may otherwise be typical of a financial management website.
Beyond the Site: Accompanying Collateral
Kelly LaPalio created a thoughtful series of collateral pieces for the practice — ten HT|TC Wealth Stories™, each depicting a case study of a particular client type, and how they could be assisted by the practice through a specific set of concerns related to wealth management. From retirement and estate planning for a large family to succession planning of a dental practice, these stories would become a useful resource for advisors to guide clients through specific scenarios, as well as an effective lead-gen strategy for prospective clients to envision how HT|TC could help assist with scenarios they may be encountering.
These pieces went through a great deal of detailed consideration, determining the best way to make the most use of this collateral. While different ideas were considered — one page on the site, individual pages, individual magazine-style printouts, digital brochures, etc. — ultimately we decided to offer them in a multi-modal format. All-in-all, digital web pages and a digital landing page were created alongside individual web/print magazine-style versions, as well as a larger coffee-table style book to be displayed in the HT|TC office.
View the digital versions of the HT|TC Wealth Stories at the link below.
Completed Product
At the close of the design stage, the development phase began, led by Katie Boucher. After a go-ahead from our compliance department, she brought the prototype design into the live site, which launched in April of 2025. The HT|TC Wealth Stories™ book launched around this time as well, with copies becoming available for clients to browse in the HT|TC office. A video walkthrough of the site is below, as well as the link to the live site — and photos of the HT|TC Wealth Stories™ book will be showcased soon!