From Credit Card To Payment Infrastructure
Global design studio Mucho has launched the new brand identity for VISA. Aiming to shift perceptions of VISA as “just a credit card company,” the global boutique studio was tasked with repositioning the brand as a trusted “infrastructure that moves a payment from point A to point B.”
Mucho stressed the importance of designing for a digital-first environment while ensuring global uniformity and keeping the 60-year-old company’s recognizability. For example: “The Visa ‘Acceptance Mark’ – the version of the brand mark contained within a blue and yellow bar,” Rob Duncan, Mucho creative director says, “although highly recognizable, wasn’t working at point of sale, especially within digital scenarios.” While the design of the brand mark was kept the same, Mucho modified the color to tell a new story about the brand — “evolved, brighter, and more dynamic.”
Mucho’s version of the brand element includes features that have always been present but with a unique twist: “By separating the Visa brand mark from within the bars, we created an ‘equals symbol’, therefore reinforcing a purpose-driven message of access, inclusivity, equality and diversity. The rest of the system is really built from those simple three bands of blue, white, and yellow as well as the ratio of thirds,” says Rob. Mucho extended the color ratio over a new modular icon and illustration system to communicate engaging stories through illustration, starting with this redesigned brand emblem as a basis.
The firm also produced a new typeface, Visa Dialect, primarily to increase brand awareness. They concentrated on creatively employing the new typeface, exhibiting Visa Dialect extremely large and cropping into the letterforms rather than adding an unnecessary graphic language to the brand system. Finally, a cutout type of portrait photography was supplemented with full bleed editorial-style photos in order to center clients in all aspects of Visa marketing.
A new set of visual assets, including photography styles, illustrations, and immersive B2B motion graphics, will allow Visa “a palette of elements that they can use across all media to tell their story,” concludes Rob.
