Inclusive Branding: Reaching Every Generation with Your Story

BUX's unique brand inspired the Fintech space for startups and established banks over the years

When I started to work with Nick Bortot, the founder of BUX, in 2014, he asked me to create a design for a trading app that is absolutely different from what is being made thus far. Something on the other end of the spectrum, the opposite of excel-sheets. I believe he said, "Vegas, think Las Vegas".

Nick is a man who genuinely thinks that a good brand can make a difference in a highly competitive space. I was, which sounds weird to say from a designer, a bit of the opposite. I believe in a good product that people need, a product with a stable backend that runs fast and doesn't crash, a smooth user experience, one that doesn't make me think twice. "Brand for a product?" Let us first get some traction then we will think about a nice logo and a visual identity. As our talks continued over the weeks and the brief started to take shape, we found common ground.

We kicked off the leading architect of the app, the interface, and the branding at a point where we had a product statement and design principles.

At this point, there was also no turning back any more. It's a startup, and our runway was a year. We launched BUX (currently Stryk) within six months—a groundbreaking brand, a swift, stable and user-friendly app that the market hasn't seen yet. And it did more than buying and selling shares. We added an entire social layer on top of it. The user could Battle up to 7 traders and have group chats, usr profiles could be followed with their trading stats and a homescreen with Local news items that helped you on your way to make the right decissions.

Main image from left to right: Nick Bortot, Ramon Gervais, Egbert Pronk, Joost van de Wijgerd and Ian Guedes Maia

BUX's solid logo expresses the young blood character, the opposite of traditional banks. Inspired by rebels that like to make a change, and that like to be honest while having fun at the same time. The logo is based on the Cubano font. The font expressesed a certain softness and being bold at the same time. The original logo is made by Edy Palma   

Typography and Icons

And the philosophy behind the two fonts families. The bold Cubona vs the Capita.  Two worlds join; New meets old. Investing for everyone. The classic Serif represents a formal market while the Sans screams millennials.

Most icons we used where custom made for the brand. It matched the style of the typography and added simplicity to the user experience.

Colours

This is going to be interesting. BUX didn't have a primary brand colour. We had quite a palette, "I called it a popsicle" anyways, too many. The true story is that we couldn't agree on a brand colour, so I suggested using colour for each app vertical. Blue for the market, Green for your portfolio and Red for Social.

BUX had two options to trade, you either used fake money to practise or real money. Orange for Funbux users and Purple for Seriousbux users. Well, there you have it; a whole scala of colours.  

Function and Branding

BUX (Stryk) has two power functions: 

1. Trading with leverage
2. Shorting the market

These key features are most attractive, and we pulled that into the logo and launch icon. However, you might have to look twice to notice it. But once you see it, you can never unsee it again! The big X is the symbol for multiplying, and within the negative space of the X are two arrows pointing up and down. These stand for the Bull and the Bear traders (short and long). 

'Let's Rock the Word of Finance' has been the Payoff since the beginning. However, you might have seen lots of Headlines that trowed you in a different direction, such as: 

The first website header; THE EXCITEMENT OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE IN YOUR POCKET. (Personally not a fan of that one.) Then we had a sub Header that said, " BUX MAKES STOCK TRADING ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYBODY", and to create even more noise, we had an in-app message that luckily used fewer words, "TRADING MADE EASY." And a TV campaign mentioning "Join The Big Boys". If we had done a brand audit, we would probably have ironed out the bipolar messaging. But we were also trying to figure things out while moving forward. The good thing is we were aware of it. And that "Let's Rock the World of Finance" had a hook on our mission to let everyone experience the (excitement) stock market. 

First TV commercial: One year after launch, we had a tiny budget to try out a TV commercial which performed quite well. We decided to go for an illustrated commercial to save costs for broadcasting instead of casting, locations and everything that comes along with total production. Niels Vrijhoeven and Emanuel Wiemans wrote the script. 

Niels Vrijhoeven: Script
Emanuel Wiemans: Art direction, Storyboard, Character animation.

In early 2018 we produced in-house with our creatives a series of Dutch TV Commercials. The Brand and Marketing team created a clear tone of voice for our daily in-app articles and the BUX Blog that read lightly but was informative for people that just entered the world of investing with a dose of humour. Just like these ads. 

We started each time with a human connection. We laid the foundations for tailor-made features and projects by finding honestly creative and functional solutions. We built a community that shares our values, perspective and way of feeling.

The development of the BUX brand has continued over the years, and it didn't stop at this point. We have an extended "Tone of Voice" that fits the look and feel. Many users enjoyed our daily local articles in the app and the UX writing, but we also had our haters, mainly experienced traders, that felt an undertone to their profession, but we didn't care much about it. The truth is we always listen and make improvements for our loyal users. That is what we found important. 

And by listing, we learned so much. We knew that we had to start building our next app, a product for long-time investors, affordable with zero fee orders. Like Robinhood in the US, Trade Republic in Germany and Freetrade in the UK. To keep up and stay ahead, we build the business to what it is today. To summarise it all, I feel some pride and shame but we all worked to the same goal, and that says enough. 

Launch Campaign, BUX Zero. Inhouse Production and Concept. A collaboration between the Design and Brand Marketing Teams. Music by Matthijs de Ronden, singer-songwriter, sound producer and good friend. 

BUX the Umbrella Company. A publisher of financial apps – one ecosytem with a clear and recognisable visual identity. That was our vision when we worked on four products at the same time: BUX X, BUX Zero, BUX Crypto and BUX Markets.  

From day one, we had the strategy to help people that have never traded before and professionals. We had Funbux to practise and experience that market and SeriousBux to start investing for real.  That spit helpt us with helping the right target groups in writing and feature simplicity. However that might sound, it made marketing very complex and expensive, and our users still need to get the difference between our products; short-time trading, long-time investing... cryptos? Which app do I need to download, and what is the difference between CFDs and Stocks? There were just way too many questions. We clearly needed to change direction and split the product under their own ID and names. With the help of a naming agency we changed the name BUX X to Stryk and worked on a huge overal redesign for BUX Zero and at the same time a major clean up for Stryk. More details on these redesigns on the page Zero and Stryk.  

Badges and Icons

For each BUX product, we designed an Icon. The only issue we faced was the icon for BUX X. That is why we made the hard decision to remove the X from the (mother) primary logo to prevent repetition and confusion. 

A new Chapter: The absents of a European NEO-Broker was a huge opportunity for BUX. By 2018 we had over €10.000.000 in revenues. The app was installed over 2 million times. We are highly experienced in onboarding EU costumers. Know for our easy-to-use interface and first financial brand with Fans. 

It goes without saying that our product and Brand matured hand in hand over time. It's modular, holistic and human – but for me, as Head of design, it was not scalable enough or future-proof. And with any redesign comes opportunities that you need to analyse. For example, photoshoots, casting, and picking the right target groups weren't that simple. Performance Marketing needed more visual handles to create content videos, and we needed to be faster at the execution. Hence we needed to rewrite our mission with the new strategy as well, Europeans NEO-Broker with Zero fee commission investing for everyone.

Meanwhile: The acquisition of Blockport, a European social cryptocurrency investment platform.

Illustration by me: Actually, this illustration never saw the day of light: As a company, we strive for long-term investing without giving advice or promoting taking risks. The word Hodl equals taking risks, which of course, is funny in Memes within a community but not part of our tone of voice within our brand and values. 

BUX acquired Blockport in 2019 to integrate the latter's technology and cryptocurrency trading expertise into BUX's platform, which at the time focused primarily on stock trading. Blockport's technology allowed for the easy and secure trading of cryptocurrencies, which was a natural fit for BUX's goal of making investing more accessible to a broader audience. Additionally, Blockport's team brought valuable experience in product development, community building, and regulatory compliance to BUX. The acquisition was part of BUX's broader strategy to expand its product offerings and become a more comprehensive investment platform.

Check out the full article on TechCrunch