El Banco Deuno

New:  Company, name, logo, font, visual system

Launched:  October, 2008

Story in brief:
This new retail bank was created by Mexico's IXE Financial Group (whose Banco IXE targets corporate and high-end markets), to serve broader segments of Mexico's rapidly emerging middle class.  "Banco Deuno," literally "Bank of One,"  reads as 'my bank, everyone's bank.'

Saffron won the identity assignment (with the help of its Madrid office), and worked with CEO Enrique Sánchez Mejorada's team to define and express "the new bank for the new Mexico."  The entire visual system, as well as the logo itself, is built upon the strong, distinctive forms of a custom alphabet, inspired by the shape of pre-Columbian glyphs like those below.

Credits:
GM of IXE Group-  Javier Molinar Horcasitas
GM of IXE Bank-  Javier de la Calle
Identity counsel, naming and design - Saffron
 

"Deuno Sans," and the glyphs that inspired it

First Impressions:
Name: "Deuno" should serve well as the communicative name (but as an English-speaker I would rather see it as DeUno).
Design:  Very smart, very strong and appealing identity system.  Flexible, extendable to multiple products. The type, as the structural frame, is sturdy enough to tolerate  a feast of secondary graphic ideas and patterns, as well as a festive palette.