The “no-frills” story behind the Qonto brand

Here is how a typical blog post introducing a new brand identity typically starts with:

• We started with brand storyboarding: weeks of brainstorming with the whole team, to decide that our brand values are: customer centricity, value #2, value #3;
• We sketched hundreds of versions of potential logos and typographies (2 other weeks);
• We tested out typographies and logos in dozens of design and tech meetups (3 other weeks);
• We finally came out with this perfect result: we hope you like it! (1 week of deliberation).

Saying I did not consider writing this piece would be lying.

However, something just felt wrong: both Steve and Alexandre (Qonto’s co-founders) and myself had spent a significant time of our career defining perfect theoretical plans for companies as consultant (McKinsey & Co, Deloitte). We then transitioned to startups (scaling them: Groupon, Wimdu, Weebly, Mailjet) or starting them from scratch (Smok.io). No need to say that in startups, any of the “perfect plans” we defined for our clients while we were consultants were “very” theoretical. In short, nothing really goes as initially planned in startups.

Also, telling you that we had the luxury to spend weeks brainstorming about brand design would be unrealistic: our focus is 100% on building the best product and customer experience at scale. Period.

So, here is the  real story behind Qonto brand design, no “by-the-book” secret recipes, or lengthy processes.

1?—?Approach

We strongly believe that there are many ways to improve the customer experience of a banking platform, not only by re-building the processes and features of the product but also through graphic design. Traditional banks lack innovating in that field too by re-using the same “corporate” brand DNA over and over and reach the point to which all banks look the same; one of the drivers of our thinking is that banking should be beautiful just for sake of it!

We consider good design a strong competitive advantage which is the reason why it is always considered in our business and product decision making process. We don’t spend much time working on it specifically; yet, it is included consistently across all actions we engage.

When it came to defining and formalizing our brand DNA, the process was consequently very natural (by “connecting the dots”) and pretty straightforward.

2— Logo

Estimated time: 1 day

The initial brief

Qonto aims to reivent business banking by blending (1) best-in-class technology, (2) optimized processes, (3) elegant design, and (4) customer insights. The first meaning of the Qonto shape must be an abstract representation of those 4 pilars.

The shape must also show crossroads because Qonto is a fintech hub, allowing companies to connect their Qonto current account to other applications, including both SaaS and Fintech startups.

The last part of the brief, probably the most complicated to integrate, was that we strongly wanted to represent the fact that we would grow and evolve with our environnement (agility) as a company, and as our customers grow too. We needed to find the perfect shape to represent that philosophy.

The iteration process

Alexandre (co-founder) keeps repeating that building a startup is a mix of (1) hard work, (2) science, (3) art, and (4) a pinch of luck. The number 4 was cleary our lucky number!

Step 1: Qonto’s product designer (Alessandro Stigliani a.k.a Sandro) spent a few hours putting down a bunch of shapes which could work, taking into account Qonto’s mission and values.

Examples of first logo proposal for Qonto

Step 2: as we were contemplating Sandro’s proposals, it became clear that we needed to bring a gentle and friendly touch to the usually austere banking space. The floral shape became obvious and we narrow down to this mood board.

Floral logos we considered as defining Qonto’s identity

Step 3: one of the underlying component of Qonto’s vision is that banking should be simple; and our branding elements should reflect that too. We consequently tried to reduce our floral patterns to the lowest common denominator: 4 simple petals with a simple and clean shape.

Qonto’s final identity

3?—?Color

Estimated time: 3–4 hours

The real story

The approach is very straight forward: we wanted blue but it was too conventional, we liked green but it was already largely used by banking players, and red was too strong. Purple came up naturally for its elegance: it’s like blue with a twist of novelty ??. We learnt later that the color purple is often associated with creativity, freedom and ambition. All these perfectly reflect Qonto brand values.

The iteration process

Step 1: we tried blue (everyone likes blue).

Blue is everywhere!

Step 2: Sandro started working on the product interface before working on Qonto’s brand identity. He used purple as a main colour for the wireframes and it sounded completely different in the good way: vibrant, bright, elegant and associated with tech companies (without mentioning Heroku ??).

Step 3: we worked on different tones of purple to come up with Electric Purple (#7a69e6) and made sure a Panton color was matching our choice; this is was actually critical for us considering that don’t only operate online but also with physical products including but not limited to the Qonto’s Mastercard cards.

Step 4: we picked staight away side colors to complement our main color. All are of the same tones and allow to break the monotony that can create a single color identity, mostly on an interface.

4?—?Pattern

Estimated time: 3–4 hours

Qonto’s final color range

Steve (co-founder) spent a year at the University of Tokyo in 2005/6, studying signal processing. He has been exposed to Japanese art, and Japanese philosophy in general: its elegance, slickness, and the omnipresent value of respect.

Origata (art of wrapping gifts), origami (art of paper folding) and tenugui (hand towels) usually contain patterns which Steve is obsessed by; that became contagious among the team.

Example of Japanese patterns

Step 1: Sandro tried out Steve’s favorite patterns he brought back from Japan on our branding materials. He came up with a selection of modernized versions along the lines of current design trends.

Step 2: we worked on them to match Qonto’s DNA. The core idea was that we needed a pattern to strengthen the tech aspect of our product as well as the API layers and connections we leverage, a cornerstone of our product development approach. Our pattern was to be used on several peaces of design including but not limited to payment card, generated documents and packaging. We decided to go with the best option providing the best fit for all use cases.

So, how do you like the result? Feel free to comment on this post, feedback is a gift!

And… stay tuned, we’re launching soon ? !

PS: we really thought we had to be transparent on our internal processes (no “BS” stories), and honest about where our focus is right now: our mind, time, and money are fully spent on building the best product and service.

This article was originally posted on Qonto official blog, the banking alternative for entrepreneurs and startups.