Typography as a strategic asset: the story behind the creation of an exclusive visual voice for Banco Multiva, designed to support its new identity, scale with the brand, and perform consistently across every touchpoint.
Carlos Ochoa, creative director at Forum Studio, approached us to develop a branding system for Banco Multiva, which had recently refreshed its logo after nearly 40 years. Our task was to create a cohesive typographic identity that aligns with the bank’s new era.
Client: Banco Multiva
Art direction: Carlos Ochoa / Forum Studio
Type design: Antonio Mejía Lechuga / Elí Castellanos
During the analysis phase, we identified the need to license a corporate typeface that would identify the bank and could be implemented in all its branches in Mexico, at ATMs, in apps, on websites, and in all its future marketing campaigns.
In this search, we suggested customizing a typeface that we were developing in collaboration with our friend and teacher Elí Castellanos, from CocijoType. Colossus adapted very well to the logo’s shapes, fulfilling the objective of identifying the Bank and being exclusive under the name Multiva Sans, as well as being scalable with the Bank’s growth, under a perpetual license.
1.
Part of the modifications we made was to change some characters, such as the /M/, the Bank’s flagship letter, and the /a/, /g/, and /t/.
2.
We also slightly increased the ascender proportions to improve performance in body text, especially in long texts such as contracts.
We extended the monetary symbols, since, as a bank, this was a priority due to their prevalence; the same was done when establishing the default tabular symbols, such as numbers, monetary, and mathematical symbols, monospaced in each weight and style variant for better table performance.
Finally, since this is a typeface for digital devices, we added Manual Hinting to improve rasterization on Windows and Mac platforms.
The result was very favorable, and the implementation was a success. By modifying a typeface from our catalog, the client saved thousands of dollars because they no longer had to purchase additional licenses for new applications and users. This also eliminated the risk of inadvertently breaching the EULA. Additionally, they received a typeface tailored to their needs, without paying for an entirely new project.
