mutoco’s identity – a mix of anarchy and simplicity
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One month ago, we launched the new mutoco website. Websites are like architecture. Each building has a major use. Some need to be functional and accessible, some are more brutalist. For us, we designed a brand with a clean, simple, and honest interface. But with a little twist.
There are two main reasons that guided our design process. First of all, our website is a platform to communicate our various and expressive projects — not our brand. We work with all sizes and types of clients from various sectors. So we didn’t want to focus on just one direction. The second reason is our principles: We stand for quality. We are curious. And we try to do things differently. We are direct, but kind — and we say as it is. We strive for unmistakable design, respectively communication with simple explanations. Out of these principles and the tone we want to communicate, we chose Helvetica Now as our typeface. Helvetica Now is essential. It’s a benchmark, and it has the perfect balance between clarity, simplicity and neutrality. On one hand, it embodies the myth of objectivity. On the other, it’s a typeface designed for the new digital age, with better shapes, better spacings and new features.
The website plays with unconventional formal and typographical arrangements, not forgetting the mobile-first approach. Accessible for anyone on any device.
Our word mark “mutoco” is a harmonic visual. So we didn’t want to stray far from that shape. But we were looking for a little detail, to give it a bit more identity. “Too playful”, “Not company-like”, “misleading” and so on, where the verdicts on most of our drafts. Here’s a little insight into this process.
By making our mark and thinking about the company structure, I listened to the interview from an iconic dutch designer duo called “Experimental Jetset.” In their speech, they talked about their early inspirations. One of them is a book cover from the book “10 miles from anarchy”, designed in 1966. The book cover shows a lower letter case «a» as a symbol of anarchy. It made a strong impression on me, and it’s refreshing to see the theme of anarchy represented in such a way. Nowadays, we are more used to the circled A. In any case, this mirrored “a” is thematically strongly associated with our company culture based on sociocracy. (here you find more about our first steps in sociocracy).
We are not anarchists, but we make our own rules. This was what we were looking for about our new logo — a little typographical twist without disturbing the word mark.
And of course, we have some colors. The rules are easy. Our typography is just black or white. Backgrounds are in white, black, or in warm grey. And to set accents, we use bright orange. It’s important to us, that all colors work in terms of contrast well together. The choice of color psychology was secondary. Our bright orange stands for enthusiasm, success, warmth, creativity, excitement — and that definitely sounded good to us ;-)
While our name is here to stay, our visuals should be living pieces, not built to last forever, but to evolve, be updated, and be changed as we change as a company.
