MBI is a B2B pivot from a company called HMBradley, which was a D2C “Neobank” offering as they put it, “a customer-centric platform rewarding consumers for their habits not just the money in their account, offering competitive annual-yield percentage, and best-in-class customer servicing program… Too nimble to settle for expensive legacy vendors and products stagnated by an aging infrastructure, the team at HMBradley built its own backend infrastructure with an eye towards versatility and modularity to accommodate the increasing customer demand.” As soon as the pivot was softly communicated, Banks started banging their line. Time to make a brand. We started with a research and strategy deep dive, developed a clear creative direction with their team using a collaborative workshop, and then iterated on identity territories, refining in to a final brand system.
The primary mark’s most distinctive feature is the bow in the uppercase “I,” which mirrors the curvature of the “B.” This interplay forms a star-like negative space, which is extracted and repurposed as a standalone mark and container. The same star-like shape emerges when four curvilinear containers converge, reinforcing the design’s cohesive geometry. The metaphor is simple and two-fold: MBI offers a light to banks operating in the darkness of legacy systems or underperforming technology as well as the promise of modularity and flexibility. Because of the way in which their code is structured, they are able to help banks launch new products or protocols without ripping out and replacing old systems. As founder Zach Bruhnke put it in an early session: “the person who is responsible for making these kinds of changes at banks either becomes the CEO if goes well or gets fired if it doesn’t.” In summary: MBI helps clients make change at their bank without breaking it.
