Afrocompass Multimedia

Standard Chartered, one of the oldest banks in the world, has rebranded. It’s an evolution of sorts, particularly for the spiral “SC” monogram, which has been simplified by removing the muted two-tone colours into a neon bright blue and green. So far, not so bad. But the designers then changed the familiar “Standard Chartered” wordmark in a customised Helvetica typeface to some other all-lower case wordmark, which is now in grey as opposed to blue. I really liked the old Helvetica wordmark with the capitalised “S” and “C” - the new typeface with that funny stub on the “t”s seems contrived and somewhat commonplace. It kind of feels like Standard Chartered are trying too hard to be hip, which is at odds with their venerable though modern brand image. The stacked wordmark feels crowded with very little space between the two words. And the grey colour is just…well, meh. No character whatsoever. The new icon lacks the elegance and pleasing curves of the previous, but I’m sure it works better in digital spaces. All in all, I really don’t consider this logo an improvement on the old one. My score is a miserly, low-interest 2 / 5 Michelangelos.

When Convenience matters