Stop trying to illustrate the product and start designing a visual system that behaves like the product. Find the underlying action (transformation, transfer, conditional release), choose a single shape or motion that carries it, and let that visual language do the storytelling. UI mockups and metaphor are the two traps to avoid.
A lot of fintech products are invisible by design. A tokenisation engine. An embedded payment rail. A smart contract layer. The interface that exists is usually an API, not a screen. We get briefed on these constantly, and the question is allways the same: how do you film something that has no face?
The two traps
Trap one: generic UI mockups
The first instinct is usually to mock up a UI. A dashboard, a screen, a notification. The problem is that an audience that knows the category can tell the difference between a real product UI and a designed-for-the-film one. Fake UI reads as stock footage. It actively lowers trust in the product rather than raising it.
For products with a real UI, show the real one, selectively. For products with no UI, do not invent one. Use abstract visual language instead.
Trap two: tired metaphors
The second instinct is metaphor. Our product is like a vault. Like a highway. Like a bridge. These metaphors are not exactly wrong, but they are exhausted. The category has used them for fifteen years, and every viewer has seen every variation. A metaphor that has been used a thousand times stops carrying meaning.
The deeper problem is that a metaphor flattens the product into a single image. A vault does one thing; your product probably does several. The metaphor cannot scale to the second shot, let alone the tenth.
The move: design a visual system, not a metaphor
What works instead is a visual system. By system we mean a shape, a colour relationship, or a motion pattern that behaves the way the product behaves, and can be reused across many shots in the film.
For an abstract fintech product, the system usually starts from one question: what is the underlying action this product performs? Most fintech products are actually doing one of a small number of things.
- Transformation. An asset becomes a different representation of itself (tokenisation, securitisation).
- Transfer. Value moves between parties (payments, settlement, FX).
- Conditional release. Something happens when a condition is met (smart contracts, escrow, programmable money).
- Aggregation. Many flows become one view (treasury, multi-currency, reconciliation).
- Verification. Something is checked, proved, or signed (KYC, identity, compliance).
Identify which one your product mostly does, and the visual system follows. Each of these underlying actions has its own natural visual grammar.
The product is not a thing. It is a behaviour. Visualise the behaviour.
Worked example: tokenisation
Tokenisation is fundamentally a transformation. One thing (an asset) becomes a different representation of itself (a token), and the representation is portable and divisible.
The visual system has to carry three states: the original asset, the token, and the moment of transformation between them. A successful design holds all three in one continuous form, rather than three separate illustrations.
We typically design a single shape, often a primitive like a square, a circle, a vertical line, that morphs cleanly from a unified state into a split or fragmented state, then back. The morph itself is the product. The audience does not need a glossary; they feel the conversion.
Worked example: embedded payments
Embedded payments are a transfer that happens fast enough to feel invisible. The thing to render is not the payment screen (there usually is not one), it is the speed and the silence of the transfer.
The visual system that works for this is usually a motion pattern rather than a shape. A small element moves across the frame faster than the eye expects, lands, resolves with a subtle sound, and the rest of the scene continues as if nothing happened. The product is not the icon; its the negative space around the icon, the absence of friction.
Worked example: smart contracts
Smart contracts are conditional release: when X happens, Y is automatically triggered. The visual system has to carry two things. The condition (a pause, a hold, an attentive state). And the release (an unblocking, a transfer, a state change).
The form we tend toward is two shapes that hold a tension between them, then resolve. Not a key and a lock (too literal, too tired) but two states that visibly relate, where one is waiting on the other. The release should feel inevitable, not surprising.
Things that almost never work
- Generic UI mockups. Worse than nothing.
- Stock footage of trading floors, server rooms, or hands on keyboards. The category has used this footage to death.
- Network diagrams with nodes and lines. Looks technical, communicates nothing.
- Globe spinning with arcs. A specific lifetime ban from the studio.
- A safe with the door swinging open. A particular kind of 2014 that should stay there.
What good looks like
A film visualising an abstract fintech product is working when an audience that has never used the product can describe, in one sentence, what it does. Not the mechanism (most viewers do not care about the mechanism) but the action: it converts, it moves, it releases, it aggregates, it verifies.
If your test audience cannot complete that sentence after one watch, the visual system is not carrying the work yet. Go back to the underlying action and design from there.
Frequently asked questions
How do you visualise something that does not have a UI?
By designing a visual system that behaves the way the product behaves, rather than illustrating the product as an object.
Should fintech videos ever use generic UI mockups?
Almost never. They read as fake to a category-literate audience and lower trust.
What is the difference between a metaphor and a visual system?
A metaphor compares; a visual system behaves. Metaphors flatten; visual systems scale across shots.
How do you visualise tokenisation specifically?
As a continuous transformation, usually one shape morphing between two states. The morph is the product.