May 28, 2019 at 11:02How we created an online bank for business. Part One: Rebranding
This is the first article about the history of creating an online bank for business. A story that I am incredibly proud of and which I want to share not only with my fintech colleagues, but also with entrepreneurs.
Two years ago, I joined the ForBank team and led the development of online services interfaces: UX / UI Internet banking, mobile applications and website. Our goal was to digitize all the services of a classic bank, starting with opening an account and entering the top five online banks for entrepreneurs.
In January 2018, we released the first version of Internet banking, developing it from scratch for six months, and in the summer launched the process of remote opening of a current account. We have become the fourth online bank in the country working with a business remotely.
But it all started with a complete change in corporate identity.
Let's deal with the concept itself. Simply put, rebranding is a combination of internal and visual changes of a company associated with a new positioning. You change the product to the needs of a new audience, change business processes and, of course, reflect these changes in the new logo, slogan and corporate identity as a whole.
At some point, the bank decided to become a digital platform, and for this, the classic bank needs to rebuild its DNA, which in the corporate world means rebranding.
You do not need to be a marketer to understand the relevance of rebranding for ForBank:
Once such a logo and color schemes were modern and even successful, but not today.
The usual practice of offline banks in such cases is to create a separate structure and launch a digital platform under a new brand. But the name “ForBank” sounded quite modern, and a good reputation was earned for decades - there was no point in starting from scratch.
Corporate identity is a graphic expression of how one company differs from others. Looking at the visual elements of your brand, customers should experience the emotions that you want to cause them.
The corporate identity is based on the logo. And now I will show you how we created it.
First of all, we made a list of words and meanings with which the logo (and hence the brand) should be associated: reliability, originality, modernity, honesty, determination, activity, perseverance.
Next, proceed to the visual part. We take the letter “F” from the name of the bank and begin to “twist” it:
At some point, we saw that the unsuccessful mark looks like an infinity sign. Very strong symbol:
A sign needs a background. We take the first part of the ForBank name and the brain gives rise to an association with the number “4.” A four is a square, a square is too simple a figure for our products, so we take a cube:
But what if we turn the cube ...
It turned out to be a honeycomb, and a honeycomb is also very a strong symbol! In nature, a hexagon is one of the strongest and most capacious geometric shapes - maximum volume at minimum cost. Stylized to infinity “F” and the strongest figure. Perfect hit:
Draft is ready. Put it aside and pick up the font This process is not so interesting, you just sort out a hundred fonts and look for the most suitable logo, we chose this option:
Harmonious grotesque is both strict and friendly due to rounding. Now we connect the graphic part with the font part, add stress to give dynamics (remember about “activity” and “purposefulness” in the semantic core) and see what happened:
The logo itself turned out to be so successful that there was no argument at all about it, which cannot be said about the choice of color:
There are several colors that are “occupied” by large banks. For example, if you say “yellow bank”, everyone will immediately think for yourself you know about whom. The same with green, red and blue. Personally, I liked two options: the green-yellow gradient and yellow:
Green-yellow was rejected for similarity with the colors of one of the online banks, yellow was missed into the final of the vote along with flaming and blue (purple was out of competition, since it is almost not in the banks used and it is important - originality):
By the decision of the majority of the votes, a fiery-fiery option was chosen:
At the last moment, we changed the direction of the sign line to infinity for
upward striving .
“Fiery fiery” we called him for a reason. In search of a better combination of colors, I came across this image:
Lava turned into the main color of the logo, ashes turned into a font. Even lightning has become part of the corporate identity - “cool white” for various backgrounds:
Step by step, we began to change the logo on all media: website, signs, business cards, bank cards.
I showed you the tenth of how a corporate identity is created. This is a rather complicated, but very exciting process. I hope you were interested too.
- Killer-feature ForBank for entrepreneurs
- How we created Internet banking
- The evolution of opening settlement accounts in online banks
- Website development and the appearance of the first landing pages
Two years ago, I joined the ForBank team and led the development of online services interfaces: UX / UI Internet banking, mobile applications and website. Our goal was to digitize all the services of a classic bank, starting with opening an account and entering the top five online banks for entrepreneurs.
Information about the bank. JSC CB “ForBank” has been operating in the market since 1992 and provides all types of services to legal entities and individuals. Nine cities of presence with a head office in Moscow. As of April 1, 2019, the bank takes 228th place in terms of assets and 169th in terms of net profit.
In January 2018, we released the first version of Internet banking, developing it from scratch for six months, and in the summer launched the process of remote opening of a current account. We have become the fourth online bank in the country working with a business remotely.
But it all started with a complete change in corporate identity.
Rebranding Reasons
Let's deal with the concept itself. Simply put, rebranding is a combination of internal and visual changes of a company associated with a new positioning. You change the product to the needs of a new audience, change business processes and, of course, reflect these changes in the new logo, slogan and corporate identity as a whole.
At some point, the bank decided to become a digital platform, and for this, the classic bank needs to rebuild its DNA, which in the corporate world means rebranding.
“What have we got here?”
You do not need to be a marketer to understand the relevance of rebranding for ForBank:
Once such a logo and color schemes were modern and even successful, but not today.
The usual practice of offline banks in such cases is to create a separate structure and launch a digital platform under a new brand. But the name “ForBank” sounded quite modern, and a good reputation was earned for decades - there was no point in starting from scratch.
The magic of creating a logo
Corporate identity is a graphic expression of how one company differs from others. Looking at the visual elements of your brand, customers should experience the emotions that you want to cause them.
The corporate identity is based on the logo. And now I will show you how we created it.
First of all, we made a list of words and meanings with which the logo (and hence the brand) should be associated: reliability, originality, modernity, honesty, determination, activity, perseverance.
Next, proceed to the visual part. We take the letter “F” from the name of the bank and begin to “twist” it:
At some point, we saw that the unsuccessful mark looks like an infinity sign. Very strong symbol:
A sign needs a background. We take the first part of the ForBank name and the brain gives rise to an association with the number “4.” A four is a square, a square is too simple a figure for our products, so we take a cube:
But what if we turn the cube ...
It turned out to be a honeycomb, and a honeycomb is also very a strong symbol! In nature, a hexagon is one of the strongest and most capacious geometric shapes - maximum volume at minimum cost. Stylized to infinity “F” and the strongest figure. Perfect hit:
Draft is ready. Put it aside and pick up the font This process is not so interesting, you just sort out a hundred fonts and look for the most suitable logo, we chose this option:
Harmonious grotesque is both strict and friendly due to rounding. Now we connect the graphic part with the font part, add stress to give dynamics (remember about “activity” and “purposefulness” in the semantic core) and see what happened:
Corporate color selection
The logo itself turned out to be so successful that there was no argument at all about it, which cannot be said about the choice of color:
There are several colors that are “occupied” by large banks. For example, if you say “yellow bank”, everyone will immediately think for yourself you know about whom. The same with green, red and blue. Personally, I liked two options: the green-yellow gradient and yellow:
Green-yellow was rejected for similarity with the colors of one of the online banks, yellow was missed into the final of the vote along with flaming and blue (purple was out of competition, since it is almost not in the banks used and it is important - originality):
Our new logo
By the decision of the majority of the votes, a fiery-fiery option was chosen:
At the last moment, we changed the direction of the sign line to infinity for
upward striving .
“Fiery fiery” we called him for a reason. In search of a better combination of colors, I came across this image:
Lava turned into the main color of the logo, ashes turned into a font. Even lightning has become part of the corporate identity - “cool white” for various backgrounds:
New life
Step by step, we began to change the logo on all media: website, signs, business cards, bank cards.
I showed you the tenth of how a corporate identity is created. This is a rather complicated, but very exciting process. I hope you were interested too.
Read in the following issues:
- Killer-feature ForBank for entrepreneurs
- How we created Internet banking
- The evolution of opening settlement accounts in online banks
- Website development and the appearance of the first landing pages