A fresh new look and feel for N26

If you’re an eagle-eyed observer, you might have noticed that N26 recently underwent a redesign. This change to our brand’s appearance is now being reflected in our #26reasons ad campaign, communications, website and social media accounts.

Our new colors, logo and typeface were carefully chosen to reflect who we are as a bank. With more than 2 million customers worldwide in 24 countries, this redesign symbolizes a milestone on our journey towards becoming a global brand. In this blogpost, we talk you through our new look and feel N26 design concept and the thought-process behind it.

When thinking about communicating our bank to the world, we wanted our aesthetic to offer our customers a clear sense of who we are. When you consider that most traditional banks tend to opt for basic, single color-schemes in bright blue or red, it made sense to us –as a digital challenger bank– to set ourselves apart from this.

As well as a simplified banking experience, we want our products to do more and make life easier for our customers. As a result, our design team carefully considered the options to produce a design scheme that reflects our brand’s personality: simple, customer-focused and transparent.

Speaking of the new colors, teal (our primary branding color), golden wheat, rhubarb and petrol blue, Christian Hertlein, N26’s Head of Design said of the choice:

“When you first look at them, they seem like quite a traditional color set- a blue; a yellow; a green. But when you look again, you notice that they’re each an uncommon version of the simpler shade. The colors were purposely chosen for their character, to reflect and express our values.”

We want to reflect the people who bank with us. In the five years since N26 began, we’ve gotten to know and understand our core customer base better than ever. The changes reflect our customers in the 24 countries we operate in globally; diverse, urbane and living modern-paced lifestyles.

We haven’t abandoned our original aesthetic, just built on from it. The new design touches every aspect of N26 banking, right down to things you see and hold; app screens, bank cards, packaging and so on. This rebranding is intended to enhance and elevate our existing appearance in a way that speaks louder to our customers and the expectations they have of us.

We believe our branding sets us apart from the stereotype that banks are stuffy or boring, by pursuing something closer to a lifestyle brand with warmth and familiarity. N26 was created from the idea to simplify banking, so for us, coming across as stiff or inaccessible just wouldn’t sit well with our mission to create the bank the world loves to use.

With regards to the redesign, our key focus was to deliver a more approachable feel through our branding. For instance, one of the reasons we moved away from the original primary color, mint, was because we felt it didn’t contrast well against white text and left us with limited choices aesthetically. Similarly, our previous N26 logo was mathematically correct but lacked character. It’s now slightly more rounded and with a thicker diameter, which will allow it to stand out against different types of backgrounds in different colors. By adding personality to our colors and logo, we are making our brand less generic and more relatable.

Finally – whether it’s an arm here, or a portrait there – you might have noticed that our posters and billboards now feature a lot more human imagery. Finances are an everyday part of life, a shared experience. That’s why we wanted to put people back at the center of it, with visuals that reflect the more human side of banking, but not in the way you expect. We wanted to show that banking doesn’t need to be boring. It can be simple, easy to use and perhaps even enjoyable.