2020 Winner
2020 Winners
Scotiabank
Scotiabank Global
Scotiabank’s global retail footprint extends across 31 countries. So when the bank was looking to refresh their visual identity to make it more modern, more digital, and more Scotiabank, OneMethod knew the solution needed to be multidimensional.
Beyond the broader challenge, the agency was also faced with working with an iconic brand (the original icon was designed 45 years ago) that has an incredibly diverse offering and presence, in terms of what they do, where they do it, and who they do it for.
SOLUTION
OneMethod's strategy from the start was to develop a system that was fresh and modern, but highly adaptive. This was inspired by what Scotiabank is at its core, but also ideal for what the brand needed to do, working hard across a variety of business lines throughout a variety of markets. From there the shop landed on the big idea, which was to invert the existing Scotiabank brand from the red bank with the colourful type, to the colourful bank that is rooted in red.
It was a massive shift for the brand, and yet entirely rooted in their past (the colours were drawn from their famous multi-colour multi-year campaign) and suited for their future (where they continue to expand their diversity). The end result was more digital, more human, and more like you. And in terms of technical design challenges, the biggest here was the scope of the bank’s offerings and presences. The brand has so many different product lines, and customer segments, and regions, and countries, and languages to navigate, that developing a truly unifying system that is both cohesive yet flexible was uniquely difficult.
In addition, going multi-colour in this category brings with it a slew of challenges, from accessibility to differentiation from the endless competition. Beyond the core idea, we also evolved the iconic brandmarks (the wordmark and the Flying S icon), to make them better suited for modern applications (digital, small spaces etc…).
OneMethod developed a new custom Scotia font with Dalton Maag, drawing inspiration from the motion found within the brand’s historic icon. We designed an original illustration style, also rooted in the overall colour story and perfect for any market or campaign. And, in one of the more subtle yet massive shifts, it designed the phased transformation of the brands name from Scotiabank to Scotia.
IMPACT
The biggest impact observed was unifying 31 countries across 6 global markets. Over the past decades, the bank had grown at a rapid rate, and with that, understandably, came a degree of inconsistency.
Through design, Scotiabank was able to almost instantly weave their brand together on a worldwide scale. And beyond the unification efforts, Scotiabank has also been recognized for several awards, where the brand’s visual identity has played an integral award.
The mobile app is the top rated financial app in Canada. They received the #1 ranking in the J.D. Power 2020 Canada Online Banking Satisfaction Study. And, they were just named the Best Bank in North America for Innovation in Digital Banking for 2020 by The Banker Magazine (a Financial Times publication).