NS&I Rebrand — Where saving begins
Awards: Digital Impact Awards 2022 – Best Digital Rebrand (Bronze)
NS&I is the UK government’s savings bank. They believe everyone should have the opportunity to save confidently. It doesn’t matter who you are, or at what stage of your life your at, everyone is different and NS&I is here to hero that!
Challenge:
To refresh the brand to appeal to a much broader and younger audience and support the new corporate strategy – to make saving accessible to everyone.
Creative concept:
We worked with NS&I to develop the brand proposition ‘Where saving begins’ and from that developed the brand expression ‘a springboard for saving’.
Solution:
A springboard provides a strong but flexible foundation from which to bounce off – we called this the springboard effect and it informs all aspects of the brand expression as well as the
way the brand assets move.
This concept really comes to life in digital, from the bouncy animated logo from which savers can jump on or off at any point in their saving journey, to the springy kinetic type which we developed in partnership with Fontsmith.
Role: Creative lead – Concept, design and art direction
Project completed at The Team
The logo has been designed to represent NS&I as a springboard for saving. Savers can jump on or off at any point in their saving journey. A springboard provides a strong but flexible foundation from which to bounce off which we called the springboard effect and it informs all aspects of the brand expression as well as the way the logo moves.
Its stacked formation brings a sense of togetherness, community, protection, strength and confidence. As an organisation, NS&I have a huge responsibility to keep millions of savers’ savings safe.
The logo changes its colour to suit different moods and situations. There is no core colour, instead, the colour palette is broad and varied, just like NS&I’s customers. It’s inspired by familiar everyday things like nature and places, the fashion we wear and the interiors we call home.
The springboard effect is also brought to life by the bouncy springboard itself, formed from the ‘I’ of the logo! It can be used in many different ways, from bouncing off messages to simply adding character to an information box.
We worked with Fontsmith to create a lovely bespoke typeface with accessibility being at the forefront. It has a little spring in its step within the characters themselves, gentle curves add a friendliness to the font which combine to reflect the brand values (confident, inspiring, straightforward and human). The typography is paired with a human, playful & authentic tone of voice that aligns with the brand personality and supports the proposition .
The process of crafting the font with the help of Fontsmith.
Customers and their world are at the heart of the NS&I brand, so a photography style was curated that perfectly captured this individuality and authenticity. The photography aims to capture people’s everyday hopes and dreams as well as their everyday saving stories and journeys. They can be big or small, remarkable or familiar and come from all corners of life.
We also developed a social strategy across all channels to target the younger audience, introduce the saving community and get the saving conversation started.
We created an illustration style that’s completely unique to NS&I. It is created typographically using the four characters of the logo – ‘N’, ‘S’, ‘&’and ‘I’. The illustrations are a fun, fresh and distinctive way of reinforcing the brand. They really come to life when they’re animated!
The brand was rolled out across multiple digital touch points including, website, transactional app, ATL campaign and social.
