Metropol

Hoooray!

One of my pet hates in this world was always the childish 'abbey' logo introduced by the Bank & Building Society formerly known as 'Abbey National' a couple of years ago.

It always struck me as if the Chief Executive had found a drawing by his 3-year old daughter with a wax crayon, and that he'd taken it to the marketing department and ordered them to turn it into a global brand image.

I also thought that their branches decorated in this style made them look like girls' clothing shops.

I work next door to Abbey's main London building and, whereas a couple of days ago it had huge versions of the wax crayon logo, today it had a new one.

It's a red oval, with four flames coming out of it, and 'Abbey' is written with a capital A in a classy serif font.

I for one am glad - at last it will look like I'm banking with a bank again!

oh you mean this logo?


I like that one, the way it fades is quite cool imo.

Hymagumba wrote:oh you mean this logo?


I like that one, the way it fades is quite cool imo.

Yes, it is a nice logo. Their REAL brand marketing mistake is scrapping that musical ditty from all their ads.

I have done a (very) quick mock of the logo - it won't be entirely accurate, but it looks something like this:

http://boulton.moonfruit.com/images

that's vile. i hope it doesn't reach the branches

It looks like two little fishes coming out of a pool of blood to me! Just to think I use to work for that company in their head office about 6 years ago in the days of the couple under the umbrella logo. Even back in 1999, they decided to close our dept of a 100 people down so they could cut costs to move up north and they kept moving up north each time to cut more costs, must be cheap labour up in Scotland to eventually get the labour out of people in India. Nothing like a good company eh!

I sort of like the new "faded edges" logo, the problem I have with it is the way in which some branches have been revamped with the new logo.

There seem to be a few different versions, the one downt the bottom end of Market Street is just a simple white sign with Silver lettering, no fadeing on the edges. Doesn't look to bad, but the rest of the brach is still in the red/green look.

The local Altrincham Branch is also a mess, they've chosen the lime green colour for this branch. It's not the colour object but it's the cheap sign they've used to cover up the old one. It's just flimsy metal/plastic thing in several pieces, which you can see the join on all green right accross and the logo is just a sticker on top of this, it looks worse at night because the lighting really highlights the edge of the "sticker".

A similar one is used for the Piccadilly Gardens one, except this is in pink, though it just the sign above the door, however, the bit where the the cash machines has been done so the whole window is pink and looks really effective, just a pitty the rest of the branch hs a brown tinted strip around the top of the rest of the windows.

I have seen other nice ones too, the ones where they have a light box with a coloured background lit from the edges, with a glass front with the logo "frosted" on that.

Most of the branches I seem to see have the rather bad cheap "cover up" signs unfortunately.

Here it is



Info at

http://www.aboutabbey.com/home.htm

as Abbey is now part of

nodnirG kraM wrote:That's an absolutely terrible logo!! At least the Abbey National logo was distinctive - this one's just another logo...

And someone else's to boot!

Actually, that's got me thinking - what other examples are there of this?

Central becoming Carlton-ified is one that springs to mind.

the good news is that they seem to be keeping with the "faded edges" look for the consumer side

Andrew Wood wrote:what other examples are there of this?

Rediffusion? And didn't HSBC use their current font for a while while whilst they were still Midland Bank?