Updating financial institution branding is a tender affair. On one hand, it should reflect the progression of the 21st century financial class of trade — electronic, agile, informed. Yet on the other hand, it should convey security and durability. The company’s initials have always raised eyebrows being the acronym of end-game warfare. However, in this application they are merely the initials of their chief investment officer and founder, well respected in the investment industry. Here is how the new brand identity evolved:
This is the third iteration of their branding that I have created over the last several decades. As with the two previous iterations, the process began with a competitive review to learn how other parallel investment organizations represented themselves in their brand identity:
We discovered an uneven representation of symbolic animals, typography, nautical symbols, astronomical globes, trees, buildings, and geometrical shapes, many implying arrows pointing forward or upward.
With this knowledge, it was possible to explore concepts that would move WMD Asset to its next stage. One important mandate was, however, that no matter how dramatically different the concepts were from what was being used now, the designs must supply visual continuity to give investors and industry oversight leaders confidence that the branding transition represented a commitment by the current leadership, and that the rebranding did conceptually alienate investors and those in the industry franchise.
Following this, I provided a brand overview of the current identity. This would be the presentation template for the new concepts too:
And here is the first presentation informed by the aforementioned competitive review and brand analysis:
