小野圭介／ONO BRAND DESIGN

By the 1980s HongkongBank was considered a pioneer of modern banking in a number of countries, however, its corporate identity didn’t reflect this. Expansion to over 1,000 branches and a controlling stake in New York’s Marine Midland Bank started to create consistency issues. The bank appeared less unified the more it grew. Henry Steiner drew from the bank’s cross-cultural foundation, a British institution founded on ‘sound Scottish banking principles’ that had always adopted local beliefs and traditions. His logo grouped four isosceles triangles into a hexagon that could be read as inward and outward facing arrows pointing east and west, with the ‘X’ at its centre evoking the Saltire, the flag of Scotland. Rather than the blue of the Scottish flag, the logo would be a vibrant red, a colour important to Chinese culture and already used on the bank’s money boxes and passbooks. In the spirit of feng shui, its four arrows were presented to management as the four poles, and business coming from all directions. Read the full story behind the logo → logohistories.com/p/hsbc-log…