The logo of the Turkish bank Yapi Kredi won’t set the world on fire, but it does its job fairly well. It provides a clear and legible name of the brand and a distinct emblem, whereas the overall style is serious and business-like.
The company was founded in 1944 by Kazım Taşkent. In 1984, it was purchased by Mehmet Emin Karamehmet’s Çukurova Holding. In 2005, the bank changed hands again as the majority of its shares became the property of the owners of Koçbank. In the fall of 2019, Unicredit created a joint venture KFS, which operates the bank.
What is Yapi Kredi?
Yapı Kredi is often mentioned among Turkey’s oldest nationwide commercial banks. It is currently estimated to be the country’s fourth-largest publicly-owned bank judging by its asset size.
The old Yapi Kredi logo looked pretty cluttered and was based on a totally different symbolic structure than the following one.
In fact, it looked more like an airline logo as airlines often use depictions of various birds heading to the sky as a symbol of an aircraft. In the case of Yapi Kredi, though, there was another reason for the bird emblem – it resembled the combination of the initial letters of the company name. So, in a way, it could be interpreted as a monogram.
The logo can be broken down into two parts, each of them being equally important. To the right, there is the name of the brand in dark blue. The two words are placed so close to each other that they might have easily been seen as a single word if not for the capital “K” indicating the beginning of the word “Kredi.”
To the left of the wordmark, there is an emblem in light gray and white. It represents an outline of the ram’s head. It is highly stylized and symmetrical. Also, due to its utter minimalism, the image is easy to grasp. All these features make it a highly successful and modern emblem.
On the downside, the icon lacks uniqueness. Compare it, for instance, with that of Ram Trucks, which is also based on the front view of the ram’s head. This is just one example, but in fact, quite a few companies have logotypes loosely based on this shape.
Another disadvantage of the overall design of the Yapi Kredi logo is that the two parts do not echo each other’s shape (although their colors look great together). The ram’s head is dominated by curves, with a couple of acute angles. The line has the same thickness in almost all the parts of the emblem. The wordmark, conversely, features the letters with square ends, while the strokes have a more pronounced variation in thickness.
The palette is harmonious and business-like albeit rather generic. The dark blue wordmark seems to be in the forefront, whereas the light gray emblem, due to its muted color, doesn’t steal the limelight.
The type in the Yapi Kredi logo is a classic sans providing decent legibility. It is rather bold without being overly heavy.
The range of assets is incredibly diverse and, in addition to credit cards, includes non-cash loans, factoring, private pension funds, and more.
The bank boasts a wide network consisting of over 820 branches, whereas the number of customers exceeds 13 million. The headquarters are based in Istanbul, Turkey.