Capital One Rebrand
Capital one is the only major founder-lead bank in the US. I was the design director for the small business unit, but was asked to work on a highly confidential side project. The total reimagining of the Capital One brand from top to bottom.
The Brief
The Capital One logo was designed in the 90s amidst the “Swoosh,” craze. There were countless examples from sporting equipment to insurance and even tire repair shops.
Though very dear to the founder, their brand identity no longer represented the evolution of Capital One from a traditional bank to a fully-digital financial platform.
We were asked to hold nothing as sacred, and deconstruct the underlying meaning behind their services and ethics to come up with something fresh, bold, and disruptive.
The Solution
Deconstructing the Capital One brand and starting from scratch was one of the most influential aspects of the brief for me.
I took that inspiration and tried to remove as much detail and decoration from the brand. The result was the creation of a brand that represented the basic building blocks of any complex shape, simple but with the capacity to create any complex structure. This went along with the idea of Capital One’s first comprehensive design system that allowed the entire organization to access the elementary building blocks of code, colors, and elements. It seemed like the perfect solution, albeit a bit too radical in the end.
An exercise in removing distraction and confusion, going back to a kind of unadorned graphical language (Bauhaus)
Capital One’s existing logo is overly complex, containing gradients, somber colors and a variety of type treatments. With the rebrand our team sought to make a symbol that was more evocative and timeless, an identity that could adapt to any execution and be dynamic when needed.
The circle, triangle and square represent the evolution of complexity from the most basic to the most modular. By positioning the triangle adjacent to the square, the negative space created the, “N,” in ONE. The square then, by proximity becomes the, “E,” without the need for any further detail.
Basic elementals (Circle, Triangle, Square) then became the starting point for more content-rich executions, like icons, interface design and even chat symbology.
Due to the simplicity of the shapes, they could be applied in heroic scale without screaming for attention, they could recede or pop as the need demanded. Here in the coffee bar at one of the Capital One cafes, the shape almost recedes into the rest of the environmental design.