Utility_0.01.
ChallengeThe UMPRUM × KB collaboration invited four designers to reimagine the look and feel of a bank card. The brief was straightforward yet ambitious: design something we would actually want to carry every day. Most cards on the market are saturated with gloss, gradients, or decorative motifs that distract from their purpose. Our challenge was to move against this trend. To push both the bank’s technological boundaries and its comfort zone of visual expression, while keeping the card radically simple.
SolutionUtility_0.1 is built on reduction and clarity. Instead of ornamental gestures, it emphasizes neutrality and function, using basic color fields and typographic precision as its main design language. The stripped-back surface communicates confidence through restraint, making the card feel more like a tool than a branded object. By questioning conventions of shine and spectacle, Utility sets a different tone: one of quiet rebellion, where clarity and purpose take the lead. The result is a card that is as much a statement of design intent as it is a functional, everyday object.