Access Bank’s New Identity: a fresh perspective
The business world is a very tumultuous place where a lot could happen overnight. Access Bank recently acquired Diamond Bank, prompting a ‘needed’ brand refresh to accompany its new bag. There are a lot of existing issues and opinions on this takeover and resulting identity, most of which this post would attempt to treat as quickly as possible.
First Concepts
Brand acquisitions are not new in the general marketplace. Acquisitions happen all the time due to a lot of interesting factors easily found in any business book or real life study. A handful of them happens when a company is pushed to a tight corner or has its arm twisted.
In Nigeria, many of these mergers have happened in recent times and with a couple of banks too.
Bank mergers happened on a large scale in Nigeria between 2004 and 2005, which saw 80+ banks drastically reduce to 25 under the then Central Bank Governor who saw the need for that.
In these takeovers (or mergers), many of the ‘swallowed’ banks were taken because of their weakness at the time of their takeover.
In the case of Diamond Bank, it was a straightforward acquisition by Access Bank that drew a lot of comments and awe from the general community — mostly because Diamond bank appeared to be doing well at the time.
Interestingly, Diamond Bank had just recently undergone a rebrand itself that included a change of logo in 2012 and an updated visual language and identity spanning the resulting years.
Notable areas of the merger/rebrand narrative
With the above basis set, we know that getting a rebrand from a business merger is a rebrand out of necessity (in most cases) and could be clogged with a lot of technical and legal luggage, some of which may include legal clauses and terms that restrict the Creative Agency or Designer to retaining several aspects of both brands in the new design.
Some of these might limit the Agency or Designers involved in the project and in turn affect the final output of the rebrand.
Of course, this might be a bogus generalization, but pay rapt attention to the next section.
The new Access Bank
Let us take a moment to analyze the new logo icon. Paying attention to the details in Line, Shape and Color.
a. Line and Shape
In line and shape for Access Bank before the merger, we had Triple 45 degree angled lines making a single turn depicting forward moving angles that had been the basis of the brand idea for Access Bank for a long while.
Diamond bank before the merger, however, had a thicker line of similar type, that followed a different path of a Single 45 degree angled line making 3 turns. This formed the shape of a diamond that also characterized the brand idea of Diamond Bank for a long while.
b. Colour
Before the merger, Access Bank had two primary brand colours on their logo icon and logo text that included the colours in the chart B below, while Diamond Bank had the four exciting colours listed below balanced by a shade of grey (#646567) for its logo text.
Combining A and B
Combining the above in their new logo, Access Bank has retained the following:
- The 3 turns in the Diamond Bank logo
- The 45-degree angles of both logos
- The Triple angled lines in the Access Bank logo icon
- The Logo text of Access Bank
- The Catalina Blue of Access Bank’s logo text
- And a fresh mix of the Orange from both brands, resulting in the shade along the lines of #e17829
- Neutral White from both brands (unavoidable)
Additions to A and B
The rebrand also introduced a few inputs to the logo:
- Closing the inner line of the diamond shape
- A reduction in the stroke-width of the lines forming the logo icon.
What does this infer?
Having a 7:2 ratio on the ratio of retained elements to introduced elements in the logo alone exposes a new and obvious line of thought.
That the Designer or Design agency did not intend to stray too far from both brands in creating a new identity for the Access Bank brand and this could be for a couple of reasons:
- To retain brand affinity, since humans tend to love what they already know and might not accept a drastic change as much as they would a subtle one.
- Designer or Design Agency couldn’t break free from the merger cliché, where the emerging brand would bear weighty attributes from both brands.
- The Designer or Design Agency’s hands were tied by a huge list of legal terms and clauses included in the takeover.
- The fault of the brief — is that a fault?
Opinions
Professionally, I think the new logo works for the bank, as I can see a good contrast between the weight of the ‘new’ logo text and the weight of the ‘new’ logo icon. Also with a proper selection of colours as performed, it is acceptable and would most likely perform well in different instances of scale.
Social and Website Applications
The new identity has already been put to use in the past few days and so far, it seems to work.
Below are a few examples:
Favicon (Small Usage)
Social Media (Normal Usage)
Website (Wide Usage)
Functionally, the brand appears to be performing well on simple and functional designs that combine secondary elements and colours from both initial brands with the primary look of the new brand.
This amounts to good standing.
Finally, What do you think?
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. Be sure to drop a few comments below.
