Sage Home Loans
How Sage Home Loans Designed a Mortgage Brand That Feels Like a Warm Hug — And Changed What Mortgage Can Look Like
About Sage Home Loans
Sage Home Loans was built on a singular conviction: the world does not need another mortgage company. Founded in the Southeast, Sage set out to be genuinely different — not in a marketing-speak sense, but in every decision about how the company communicates, how it treats borrowers, and how it presents itself visually. The mortgage industry has changed very little in decades. Thirty-day timelines. Walls of compliance disclosures. Stock imagery of keys and rooftops. Sage built its brand in deliberate opposition to all of it.
Leading the design effort is Amberlee Prince, Lead Product Designer, who joined Sage as the company's first and only designer. There was no design system, no brand guidelines, and an engineering team working, in her words, "off vibes." Working alongside Marketing Operations Manager Abby Merritt, the two-person team built one of the most distinctive brand identities in mortgage — a system that now supports nearly 200 loan officers while feeling unmistakably like itself.
- Southeast
- 200+ Loan Officers
- Independent Lender
What Judges Said
- Human-Centered Design Philosophy
- Sage built a brand that treats borrowers as intelligent adults. No walls of compliance disclosures leading the experience. No generic stock imagery of keys and rooftops. Navigation built for two clicks. Educational content that explains without overwhelming. Judges recognized a brand that earns trust not by looking serious but by being genuinely useful.
- Distinctive Visual Identity From First Principles
- The design language — rounded shapes, warm natural tones, organic feel, purposeful photography — was built from a clear brief: make mortgage feel like something other than mortgage. The brand communicates competence and warmth simultaneously. Most mortgage companies treat those two qualities as mutually exclusive. Sage built a system where they reinforce each other.
- Brand Consistency at Scale With a Team of Two
- With nearly 200 loan officers and a day-to-day marketing team of two, Sage built a three-layer consistency system: detailed documentation with specific do's and don'ts (not abstract principles), voice guidelines developed in collaboration with the loan officers themselves, and centralized brand assets accessible to every employee. A Claude skill was built to carry the brand's tone of voice into any content produced company-wide.
"I wanted Sage to feel like a nice warm hug. I don't really know how else to say it other than it literally came to me in a dream."
— Amberlee Prince, Lead Product Designer — Sage Home Loans
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Case Study Deep Dive
The Challenge
Build a complete brand system from zero — no design guidelines, no visual direction, no consistency infrastructure — for a company with nearly 200 loan officers and a mission to genuinely differentiate in one of the most commoditized categories in consumer finance. The mortgage industry is built on complexity and opacity. Sage wanted to make it feel simple, trustworthy, and human.
The Approach
Amberlee Prince joined Sage as its first designer. Near the end of her pregnancy leave, she had a dream: she arrived at work and everything was in claymation. She ran with it. The design language she built from that starting point — rounded corners, organic shapes, a warm natural palette — softened the inherent anxiety of the mortgage process without sacrificing credibility. Abby Merritt built the operational layer: brand guidelines with specific do's and don'ts, voice guidelines developed in collaboration with loan officers themselves (not imposed top-down), and centralized asset accessibility so every team member always knows where to find what they need. Twice a year, the whole company gathers for Sage Time — an internal event that brings culture and brand direction into focus for everyone at once.
"We don't want to treat you like you're dumb. Here's the education. Here's what we do. We're making it simple."
——Abby Merritt, Marketing Operations Manager — Sage Home Loans
The Result
The 2025 Exhibit Awards Southeast Mortgage recognition confirmed what a two-person team can build with genuine creative ownership: a brand that earns borrower trust not by looking serious but by being genuinely useful. Amberlee Prince and Abby Merritt have demonstrated what it looks like when design is treated as a core business function in an industry that has historically treated it as a footnote.
Who Evaluated This Entry
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Brand Spotlight Video
Amberlee Prince & Abby Merritt on Building a Mortgage Brand That Feels Different
Lead Product Designer Amberlee Prince and Marketing Operations Manager Abby Merritt on the dream that started the brand, what it means to treat borrowers like intelligent adults, and why two people built something that feels like it took twenty.
Amberlee Prince — Lead Product Designer, Sage Home Loans
Is your brand next?
Submissions for the 2027 Exhibit Awards open later this year.
