New:
A second logo, to differentiate the corporation and its global institutional services business from its local retail bank.
Launched:
January 25, 2005
Story in brief:
It's the story of a split personality. One side is a local retail banking system, the linear descendant of the bank founded in 1874 by Alexander Hamilton and friends. Its strongest franchise is still among the city's older families. The other side competes in global services to institutional investors, such as 'back office' processing for mutual funds. (Its principal competitor in this specialty, State Street Corporation, had resolved a similar personality split by closing its retail bank.)
More to come, as we hear more from 'BNY' and from Lippincott Mercer, on the leadership direction and design brief…
Credits:
C.E.O.: Thomas A. Renyi
Identity counsel and design - Lippincott Mercer
First Impressions:
It's certainly decorative, and evokes stock certificates and such. But such imagery is a bit backward-looking, I would think, for a business so predicated on innovative technologies. And I wonder about Mr. Renyi's thinking in prolonging the “New York” association (and incidentally, the counterproductive “The”), for an institution whose ambitions are so assertively global.
Technically, the new mark is a challenge. It reduces poorly, and the charm of its colored security pattern is lost in B&W. Implementation design will be all-important; in Connie Birdsall's hands, it will be elegant.
Strategically, the new mark separates the corporation into two cultures and in doing so, it appears to promote as well as to facilitate a sale of the retail business.
(for New York branch banking, the old logo won't change)
Also read:
Bank of New York (pressrelease)
