Mission City Federal Credit Union is a financial institution formed by the early police and firemen that birthed the city of Santa Clara over 60 years ago. Until recently, their story was wasn’t ringing any bells to the locals they hoped to serve one day.
This Not-For-Profit credit union started a new chapter by opening its doors to local residents with service offerings poised to run the major banks out of town. They initiated a brand building campaign (by hiring me) starting with the design of a new logo that would celebrate its local heritage and speak to and audience rooted in community and traditional values.
Personally, I love constraints. They narrow the path to arriving at a solution and sometimes does a lot of the work. Part of my job is to make sure they make sense and support branding objectives. With some key constraints provided by the client and other research extracted from executive interviews and competitive analysis.
Instead of simple abstractions, the Mission City Federal Credit Union logo is highly detailed and designed to appeal to a more sophisticated eye. This mark visualizes these values: communal, exclusive, secure, established, and elegant. Since the credit union is owned and operated by its members, the town is the organization. This refined style strengthens its values and differentiates itself from the typical simple abstract approaches of its competitors.
Logo assets were delivered to client in multiple formats along with a Logo & Color Usage Guide that showed the client how to reproduce it in various color applications.
The logo was also took on new dimensions in the lobby signage. The letterforms were extruded in metal and offset from the wall with a backlight. The illustrated city element was etched along a long glass divider. And on an adjacent wall space, a mural depicted many images of community surrounding the branch.
Every project, from ATM card to ATM machine to collateral, provided an opportunity to develop the Mission City Federal Credit Union visual language further. The New Member Kit was designed to be customizable with different types of product sheets. Oversized postcards were fun, eye-catching ways to create a constant line of communication with prospects int he neighborhood.
To develop its online banking application, wireframes and interactive models were used for proof of concept. An intuitive UI was designed to be easy to use from a browser.
Updates were made to the application drawing areas of improvement from user metrics and feedback.
Not long after came the Mission City Federal Credit Union Mobile Banking apps and apps to find local deals.
A tablet version of the app followed shortly after.
Mission City boasts that their members adopt about 26% more financial products now than they did before my time. It also signed 870 new members.
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