Banking Powerhouse ANZ Debuts New Global Logo
ANZ officially debuted its new logo in Indonesia last month, and has announced plans to roll the brand out globally later this year. Indonesia is one of the bank’s highest priorities in its expansion plan, and thus chosen as the place to launch the new brand.
Alex Thursby, CEO of ANZ for Asia Pacific, said, “The new brand symbolizes ANZ’s strategic transformation to become a super regional bank with a strong focus in Asia Pacific.”
ANZ’s modernized and simplified its wordmark and added a symbol — what ANZ calls a lotus. ANZ describes the lotus as a symbol of unity and growth which is relevant to their customers across the region regardless of differences in language and culture.
Note: The old ANZ wordmark was a rich blue color. In the graphic below, the
old wordmark is shown in red to aid in the creation of an illustrative overlay.
ANZ’s new “lotus” logo
ANZ says the three petals of its “lotus” logo signify Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific.
In the logo’s negative space — in between the “lotus” petals — you can clearly make out
the shape of a person with uplifted arms. This represents the bank’s customers and people,
which ANZ describes as the driving force behind its business.
The subtle lotus symbol should work relatively well in ANZ’s Asian markets. As one Aussie reporter noted, the lotus is “one of key icons of New Age Orientalism.”
The new logo, designed by M&C Saatchi, doesn’t show up anywhere yet in the ANZ brand media library.
@ANZozCEO on Twitter
ANZ Australian Region CEO Brian Hartzer has joined the twitter craze.
You can see what he’s tweeting here. The original Twitter page ANZ launched
is shown above. Around 3-4 weeks later, they gave the page a makeover (below).
In that time Hartzer added just shy of 100 new Followers.
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They can’t be serious? While I see merit in this design for the Asian market, in my opinion it’s a step backwards for the Australia-Pacific region. The new logo looks like something from the 90′s.
The logo is awkward and weakly justified. It looks like a bulldog has dipped its nose and jowl in blue paint and then laid it on some paper.
And for crying out loud, let go of the white strikethrough already. Yes, yes, the ‘N’ crosses over it creating an illusion of layering. Very clever. Now, move on.
A makeover for a bank that is out of touch… compared to bnz and others it lacks in all areas.
Force fitting the rationale is always a dead give away. I instantly saw the opposite – a person screaming or hollering with mouth wide open, and hands apart. Be great for a Unicef logo or similar…. could (should) do better! Bet it cost a bomb!
You have to be kidding me…
Congrats on M&C Satcchi in coming up with something so pathetic, Put a ‘story’ to it & passing it off to the weak minded individuals @ ANZ for a Nice big wad of cash.
ANZ… what were you thinking?
As a logo designer I was left scratching my head. The imaginary capture’s most banking customers feelings towards banks in today’s market.
Hand thrown up in disgust. Looks like someone pulled a Ree’s
The lotus isn’t that well known in New Zealand and is more related to Asia than Australasia. It is the national flower of India and Vietnam. Someone hasn’t done their research or creating a rationale for the logo not the other way around.
It looks like they haven’t designed to their target market, banking. Banking is still a formal environment so a more formal logo should have been presented.
It’s just lame. Dated, boring and lame.
Simplified one thing, added another…
Bankwest had done a much better job in rebranding than any other bank http://thefinancialbrand.com/2008/08/12/bankwest-virtual-branch/
http://augustanimals.com/
or more accurately…
http://augustanimals.com/?p=674
Please have a peak at our opinion on the new ANZ, plus an interesting ‘flip-side’ to the story.
This is dreadful! Turn the symbol upside down and you have a screaming ghost.
OMG… they live in our world.
The typeface has been completely bastardised with few of the curves matching. Very amateurish! How much did they pay for this??? I agree with Dale! Saatchi think if they charge enough and package it with enough spin they can sell any crap as something worthwhile.
Good one Saatchi!
It looks like a sharholder crying into his hands. Waste of time and money.
I can’t believe they paid for that logo! I could have got that designed for $30. It looks cheap and tacky! I think they should have asked a few of the general public before spending $15million on that.
This looks like something I designed in first year uni. The text style doesn’t match the symbol, and the symbol itself looks like a bloke with an afro and giant novelty disco shoes. Hopeless! It’s sad to admit, but the last refresh of their old logo was one of the main reasons I moved to ANZ. This thing makes me want to shift back to the CBA.
I don’t have any opinion about the logo really… I don’t find it bad… but I don’t love it either… I also think that sometimes a change is good. I would like to say one thing though to “Al” who commented “…the last refresh of their old logo…. main reasons I moved the ANZ…” are you a complete retard or are you just trying to be funny? I mean in you comment you say that it looks like something you designed in first year uni… so obviously you 1. are a designer that does not work in the industry because you work at a bank 2. You dropped out of designing school because it wasn’t for you… Either way you should be the last person commenting about anything really… I mean what kind of person decides on their employment based on the companies logo?
Please play nice everyone.
Can anybody let me know the meaning or anything of this new logo of ANZ?
I think it’s supposed to be a lotus and a person.
One has to go deep inside to understand the potential of the creativity. Well, there are myraid perceptions. Let’s learn to commend the efforts. Even I would create this logo and there would be thousands of critics. So what is done, is done and will be used to it. It’s a gut to use something with lot of critics and controversy.
Unanimously canned by the on-line design community here:
http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/people_banking.php
Ouch.
How childish! You had to resort to name calling. Look buddy, the designs that we the design community rip into are poorly designed and ill conceived. May I ask what your background is?
The readers of Under Consideration (the site you linked to) are all designers who think (1) their own work rocks, and (2) everyone else’s work is crap. Every day, a new logo gets reviewed, and every day, flocks designers (who are wayyyy better than you) compete with one another to see who can come up with the most creative put-downs or point out the most-biggest flaws. They talk about how this font or that font is poop, that the colors are dated (no matter what colors were used), etc., without every really considering the client’s design objectives, creative strategy or business model. It’s almost always a debate about design aesthetics that ultimately boils down to a matter of personal taste and opinion.
I used to follow Under Consideration, but no more. The site does not provide much in the way of insight or analysis that one can put to use. In fact, the site will probably leave most non-designers shuddering in fear that they’ll do something stupid if they ever redesigned a logo. The site seems to primarily obsess over what’s wrong with logos — what not to do. The authors of the blog offer some gems from time to time, but generally, the people commenting at the site are insufferably negative, and predictably redundant.
That said, the ANZ logo may have some issues. But I wouldn’t put too much stock in what the community at Under Consideration says. You could put a glass of water in front of them and ask whether the glass was half empty or half full, and they’d tell you how ugly the glass was. Or that you put the wrong liquid in the glass (“It so obviously should have been something orange…”). Or that you should have used a cup instead of a glass (“Using a glass in this analogy is sooo 1990…”).
Fabian,
The opinions I have regarding the tone and timbre of Under Consideration are irrespective of my background. One can recognize that the site is predominately negative regardless of their area of expertise. I’m sorry that you took my generalization personally, but can only guess that’s because you regularly comment on logos there.
I am happy to listen to any contrary thoughts you may have about Under Consideration, and am interested in hearing your analysis of the ANZ logo. But that is the limited extent and defined scope of my engagement here.
I’m not a fan of the logo at all and cannot see how they could possibly derive a lotus flower out of it (maybe they should check out NSW Govt’s Waratah for something more lotus like!)
To me it looks like one of two things:
A) A woman with a huge afro, I’m thinking the Supremes but I’m not that au fait with 70′s music
OR
B) An incredibly symbolic Christian icon – the whole hands upraised seems to be praising a God – maybe to thank Him/Her for competitive mortgage products?
Also, have they seen the Save The Children Logo? It looks like the inverse of this to me:
http://images.google.com.au/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&hl=en&source=hp&q=save+the+children+logo&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2&aq=f&oq=
No, upside down it is a pig’s head. Just paint on the eyes and nostrils.
Sorry but the logo itself just looks bad, no issues with typeface that’s passable