A design system for Monese’s new debit cards
Being a mobile banking service, at Monese we don’t have physical branches. Everything from opening an account to managing your spending is handled entirely within our Android and iOS apps and, as such, we don’t have many brand touchpoints within the real world. With our debit cards being one of the only ways our customers interact with us on a daily basis, they’re some of our most important brand assets.
Despite the significance of our cards, their design has remained mostly untouched since we rebranded entirely over two years ago. At this time our main aim was to reflect the fact that we were ‘growing up’ as a company and so when we came to design our card, we wanted to create something that would inspire confidence in the Monese brand.
Today mobile-first banks are more widely accepted, but several years ago we found customers were more hesitant about trusting a branchless banking service with their money. As a result we strived to instil an impression of legitimacy into our card, to create something that wouldn’t feel out of place when compared to those from high street banks. At the time this had the desired effect. But, as we’ve grown, legitimacy has become less of a concern — and our debit card, that didn’t feel out of place next to other banking services, wasn’t differentiating us from them either.
In addition to this, it felt like our card couldn’t keep up with the direction Monese’s visual identity was heading in. Following our rebrand, we continued to push our design system, and the dark, alluring tone of the old card began to feel increasingly like it didn’t match up with what we’ve been producing as a team. For a while we had been aware that the design was due a makeover that would match the bold, bright and optimistic visuals that represent us today.
When we launched European accounts in 2017, we adapted the card design by simply reversing the background colour to create a basic system of dark cards for our UK accounts and white cards for our European ones. At the time this worked, but the intricacy of the cards didn’t allow for much flexibility within a larger system — and as soon as business accounts placed a third card on the horizon, it was time to move beyond a single design and create a system that would meet the needs of a global banking service.
Creating our new system
For our card system to be a success, we knew it would need to:
- Allow for simpler and more striking cards
- Adapt for different markets and account types
- Represent the Monese of today
Simplifying the card design was one of our main priorities. We began by exploring the complex and precise network of the old card to experiment with bold and expressive compositions that looked more eye-catching, whilst still utilising the soft and dynamic forms which are distinctively Monese.
Eventually we settled a simple composition that allowed for large bold washes of colour and left the Mastercard logo on a plain white background, where it couldn’t clash with other colours.
One thing that needed to be retained from the old cards was the clear differentiation between the UK and European variants. With a quarter of our customers using both cards, the ability to quickly identify each card was a crucial feature of the old design.
For each card we chose to focus on a single colour from our brand palette, to give them a more unique identity — both from each other and from other cards.
With our offering now expanding to both personal and business debit cards, we chose to differentiate these through the card’s background colour — with business accounts adopting a darker palette to exude a more sophisticated and understated feel, fit for a more premium product.
We’ve already begun rolling out these new cards to those ordering a new or replacement one — and we can’t wait to get these new designs into the hands of all of our customers. More than that, our new cards represent a scalable system with a clearly defined graphic language. From this we’ll be able to more easily launch future products while maintaining a brand identity that’s consistent with Monese’s visual aesthetic moving forward.
