05/12/2016

Yes we Qan

about

(Est. 1959, previously Qantas Credit Union) “Qudos Bank is a customer owned bank and was established in 1959. Qudos Bank has over 100,000 Members and an A2 investment grade rating and offers a full range of retail banking products including, Home and Investment Loans, Credit Cards, Personal Loans, Deposit Accounts, Superannuation, Financial Planning and a range of Qantas Points Banking products. Branches and ATMs are located in key states across Australia.”

design by

Principals (Sydney, Australia)

Principals project page

opinion/notes

(Note: Only after I prepared the whole post I realized this launched in March, which puts it past my usual cut-off timeframe for what to include on Brand New but… yeah, the post was already ready.) Originally established by a group of Qantas employees, the old logo clearly reflected where the credit union came from by using the Qantas airline logo along with a large "Credit Union" descriptor in a speech bubble because… who knows. After Qantas airline asked the credit union to stop using the name, they changed it to Qudos — "Qudos is a twist on ‘kudos’ meaning praise, reward and recognition, reflecting the company’s culture and mutual status." — which is kind of a clever play on building on the Q from the Qantas name. I have a personal disdain for the word "kudos", I don't know why, I just find it very off-putting but I am guessing I'm alone in this. The new logo is simply a dressed up "Q" which doesn't quite reflect all the things mentioned in the design quote above. It's fine and there is something cool about the chevrons in the "Q" and the color variations but, unfortunately, those have been lost to some over-eager seasonal executions that tremendously devalue the status of the company by looking like middle school illustration efforts. I bet the guidelines say nothing about doing the "Q"s with hats on it. The applications have a weird old-school vibe with the Didone headline typography and generic stock photos that establish little visual relation to the logo. Overall, this feels like it's being pulled into different visual and tonal directions that leave it hanging awkwardly in the middle of being cool/young and traditional/old.