From all directions
Henry Steiner's 1983 logo for the HongKongBank.
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The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (later ‘HongkongBank’ and then HSBC) was founded in 1865 by Thomas Sutherland to finance the growing trade between China, Europe and the United States.
By the 1980s HongkongBank was considered a pioneer of modern banking in a number of countries, however, it’s corporate identity didn’t reflect this. Expansion (increasing branch numbers to over 1,000) and the acquisition of a controlling stake in New York’s Marine Midland Bank started to create consistency issues. The bank appeared less unified the more it grew.
At this time, the bank was represented by a version of the flag of Scotland, the homeland of Sutherland and a heraldic crest similar to Hong Kong’s former colonial coat of arms. In its composition of lions, a unicorn, merchants and a Chinese junk it symbolised a city emerging as an important exchange between East and West.
In order to give the bank a consistent and modern visual presence, unify its diversified and expanding international operations and improve the clarity of customer and investor communications it worked with Henry Steiner to devise a new corporate identity (CI). This kicked off a two year consultation period in which Steiner invited stakeholders to share their perceptions of the bank, which then saw him having to manage the competing voices of bank managers across 52 countries. Reflecting back on this time, Steiner noted that, while the intention was to use this feedback as the basis of possible directions for the CI, many of the respondents latched on to historical imagery, and the exercise didn’t provide a sufficiently forward-looking direction to explore.
