Bread Line Design

With the world economy going down the pan faster than a fat man that down to fast, banks have been closing and reporting loses left right and centre. Bank brands that once seemed so strong now appear frail and weak, with the biggest falling hardest.

I was on the Royal Bank of Scotland’s website the other day checking the money I didn’t have was still there, when I came across an article on their Daisy Wheel logo. I was struck by a comment they made about bank identity back in the 1940’s, before big logos and bigger brands:

“For the banks, it was more important to convey a message of solidity and stability (for example, through a handsome, stone-built branch in a prestigious location) than to create a unique identity”

Back then an impressive, solid building clearly reflected directly onto the business and brand that owned (or was perceived) to own it. Now every bank brand manager would sell his grandma if he could inject some “solidity and stability” into his banks image. Simply slapping a logo onto the front door isn’t gonna cut it.

Curiously many of the aforementioned handsome stone buildings can be seen in and around town and city centres across Britain, but in most cases all the branding they receive is the banks plastic logo speared into the stonework like an ill advised sky dish. I’m often left with a sense that these buildings will be around far longer than the banks that in habit them, which I imagine is far from the desired affect.

Contrast that with buildings that seem to have been built around the very logos of the business within and the affect can be quite powerful, giving a sense of real strength and longevity. The Scotsman building in Edinburgh is a great example.

Over the next two years, when big bank brands begin picking up the pieces of their shattered idenitites it would be good to see a more concentrated effort in improving the visual identities of their buildings. Banks might not have had the marketing budgets they do now, but in the ’40’s solidity and stability mattered above all else, something they’d do well to remember again.

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