A Century Crystal
Ivan Chermayeff’s logo and PAOS’ corporate identity for Japanese insurance company Nissay.
This post is supported by LogoArchive – The home of historical logos. Discover thousands of history’s finest logo designs from the world’s greatest designers. Bookmark and collate logo inspiration for your next logo project here.
Nippon Life Insurance Company was founded in 1889 and by the mid-1980s had become the world's largest life insurance company in terms of total assets and ‘premium income’. It had consistently been a leader in the life insurance industry, was the first company in Japan to pay policy-holder dividends, was one of the first to hire women as sales staff and was an employer of over 70,000 people. Together, these had secured it a venerable position in Japanese society. However, studies undertaken in 1985 indicated that despite Nippon Life being considered a large, reliable and friendly corporation there was some confusion around the extent of its services. Put simply, there were still many people who did not know what the company did.
With this revelation in mind, Nissay Life would embark on the development of a new communications strategy. This would include the design of a new logo and corporate identity. This intended to better express the services and values of the corporation and give a boost to employees with a strong image to be proud of. PAOS and DENTSU would collaborate in 1985, and work through to 1988 to help Nippon Life Insurance achieve this ahead of its 100th anniversary in 1989.
Just like their approach to other projects, PAOS would draw on the outside support of specialists. In this case, PAOS invited American designer Ivan Chermayeff of Chermayeff & Geismar (Mobil, EPA & NBC) to create the logo.
The goal was to develop something that would express a revised corporate vision built around the notions of ‘newness’ and ‘communicating and proposing’. Further, the design should better set the company up for international expansion. This would mean designing and organising visual assets in a way that could be easily fabricated as signage, lower costs in the production of corporate communications and standardise colours and typefaces for introduction into other parts of the world.
Before beginning, Chermayeff came to Japan and studied the Japanese life insurance industry as well as the ‘corporate atmosphere’ of Nissay (he would return a year later to design the logo for Japanese insurance company Tokio Marine). From this experience he submitted four proposals. The design selected by PAOS would be dubbed the ‘Century Crystal’ in honour of the corporation’s coming centenary.
Chermayeff’s design took inspiration from the shapes inherent in the old logo (forming a link to the tradition of Japanese heraldic symbols and calligraphy). He simplified the reference into a diamond shape and introduced, within the negative space of the diamond, a faceted ‘N’. This placed emphasis on a Latin character as a expression of foresight, the corporation’s new international scope and welcoming attitude.
