Ragged Edge makes over Monzo, but keeps the hot coral card

Monzo has unveiled a rebrand which takes the online bank in a warmer, more “friendly” direction, it has revealed on its blog. Since the popular bank launched in 2015, it has established six million customers in just seven years; Natwest has 7.5 million personal customers for reference. However, Monzo has become restricted by its branding. This is largely due to the amount of products, features and digital ads it has to flex. In response, Ragged Edge has been bought onboard for the refresh; the brand agency has focused in particular on colour, while turning to illustrator Ola Dobrzyńska for the human quality Monzo seems to be after.

Prior to the Ragged Edge collaboration, Monzo reveals: “We felt limited by the colours and assets we had to work with. And we were losing a distinctive thread running through it all.” Colour is somewhat of a contentious design area for Monzo – its coral cards are one of the things the online bank is known for. “Hot coral represents our warmth, our empathy and our human quality,” says the Monzo site. “So we’ve made it the forefront of our brand, followed closely by deep navy and soft white.” A range of secondary colours have also been introduced.

The “vibrancy” of Monzo’s palette can be seen most in Monzo’s new logo – which is unchanged beyond the updated colourways (and will be visible on Monzo’s updated app).

Elsewhere, the idea of friendliness is the focus of the work. For example, Ragged Edge introduces Oldschool Grotesk in a hero typeface for its “analogue friendliness and bold curves that hark back to the days of wood-block printing”, the blog post continues. The functional typeface is Monzo Sans, a custom cut of Universal Sans with generous dots and curled ends. Exaggerated UI elements such as buttons will be used to break down Monzo’s offerings simply and clearly to customers – though these will be used across advertising rather than in app.

Ola Dobrzyńska has developed a series of expressive illustrations, aiming to bring personality to the brand. Monzo adds: “We’ve steered our illustrations away from the popular corporate style that uses flat geometry and generic people.”

The bank states that the next step in the rebrand is to apply it across sub brands like Monzo Premium, Monzo Business and in app.