BY Armin

Tu Banco es mi Banco

I was going around a few web sites yesterday and I stopped by Tony Spaeth’s Identity Works where I spotted this beauty. It looks like it was completed and launched back in September, so it’s not completely fresh, at least not just in its date. Ixe Grupo Financiero, established in Mexico in 1996, is one of the strongest financial groups around at the moment (or so I am told, and so I understand) perhaps because of their corporate and high income audience, and they have opened El Banco Deuno. It translates very roughly as “One’s (own) Bank.” And it is targeted to the burgeoning middle income class, which until a few years ago was not as prosperous as what is known as middle income class in the US or Europe. Point being: El Banco Deuno is a friendly, accessible and modern bank with strong roots in Mexico. The identity has been designed by Saffron and it is quite fantastic.

Color palette

Deuno Sans Heavy, the custom typeface designed by Mike Abbink and Paul van der Laan, based on pre-Columbian designs from the ancient cities of Mexico.

Brand extensions for credit and mortgage.

The identity in action.

Like many other chunky typefaces, this one can be filled in.

As you can see this is a very nice, colorful and active identity. It’s just January, but this will be, for me at least, one of the best of the year. Of course, it doesn’t come without its criticism. Mainly that it looks and feels like the offspring of Wolff Olins’s Macmillan Cancer Support and New Museum, but I guess there could be worse combinations and when applied to the context, the resulting identity makes perfect sense. The typeface as a whole is successful but in some details it looks rushed and unfinished. The application on the web site is quite horrendous and does a disservice to the whole effort. But overall, this is really great and it’s nice to see some good identity make its way to my home country, even if it’s via an international design consultancy.

\n\nI was going around a few web sites yesterday and I stopped by Tony Spaeth's Identity Works where I spotted this beauty. It looks like it was completed and launched back in September, so it's not completely fresh, at least not just in its date. Ixe Grupo Financiero, established in Mexico in 1996, is one of the strongest financial groups around at the moment (or so I am told, and so I understand) perhaps because of their corporate and high income audience, and they have opened El Banco Deuno. It translates very roughly as \"One's (own) Bank.\" And it is targeted to the burgeoning middle income class, which until a few years ago was not as prosperous as what is known as middle income class in the US or Europe. Point being: El Banco Deuno is a friendly, accessible and modern bank with strong roots in Mexico. The identity has been designed by Saffron and it is quite fantastic.

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners