“We had to learn a lot about how different aspects of insurance work in order to do this project, especially when designing the digital product,” the studio says. In the process, the studio stumbled across a selection of historic insurance documents, which also happened to be curious artefacts of graphic design. Often these documents advertised insurance policies – “or, in some cases, were the actual policy itself,” says XXIX. Many featured elaborate typography and remarkable printing processes. One motif, in particular, reappeared across several documents: illustrated scenes showing the kind of disaster the company insured against framed in a “classically ornamental cutaway”.
XXIX, a branding studio based between New York City and Berlin, knew that “reputation and longevity” would be crucial to creating the new identity for Modern Life, a tech-enabled life insurance brokerage. “Life insurance is unique in that it’s a product you ideally buy once and that lasts the rest of your life,” the team explains. However, XXIX also had to signal innovation. As Modern Life uses technology to advance the insurance space, “the challenge was finding the edge between familiar and fresh”, XXIX adds. The solution lay in looking back at early insurance branding techniques and collaborating with illustrator Vincent Mahé.