INTL. REVIEW BY Mark Holtmann POSTED BY Brand New

Dawn of the Doodle

As the financial crisis rages over the world, its consequences are becoming evident in identities too. One of them is the disappearance of the iconic Fortis bank logo from the streets of the Benelux (the economic union of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), with its final name carrier Fortis Insurances being rebranded as Ageas. Created from Dutch and Belgian financial institutions in the 1990s, Fortis at some point ranked number 20 on the Fortune 500 list. After a string of unfortunate events Fortis found itself effectively collapsing and its parts were sold. This past April, the remaining stand-alone insurance activities renamed itself Ageas — derived “from the Latin word ‘agere,’ meaning action, drive, and a conviction to forge ahead,” according to this lengthy name explanation. Still being a considerable business, Ageas now employs 11,000 people with an annual inflow of around EUR 16 billion.

The name ‘ageas’ is not capitalised. This understated approach is deliberate. We know our business, but we don’t want to force our opinions on anyone. We want an open and transparent dialogue between equal partners. At the same time, the lack of capitals heightens the sense of unity within our group. No part stands above the rest. All of us at our new company have the same goal: to fulfill our potential as an international insurance business.
— Naming document

With that, it was curtains for the Fortis logo, designed by Landor UK, which certainly seems to have made its mark on identity design. At least in my experience it had the tendency to frequently pop up in discussions and brand positioning charts sent by clients. The symbol had the unique quality of being a logo that showed a multitude of elements while still being somewhat specific in its shapes. The story goes that it was derived from an aerial photograph that a thrill-seeking, skydiving designer (do they exist?) made of a typical European town. Symbolizing the different communities that Fortis was serving, its overall shape always reminded me somewhat of Texas.

In its place, Ageas has opted for a set of “free-drawn colored circles around the name [to] express a sense of energy and desire to get things done,” as the press release states. It does have a sense of energy, and for an insurer it looks like quite a step away from the usual solid, trustworthy and maybe slightly boring identities. It might even be a smart move to take a little distance from the traditional insurers who are now under fire from new players on the market that undercut them with Ryan Air-like tactics and more transparency in their pricing schemes.

The Ageas logo however is more of a rough sketch of such a logo instead of really being that logo. The circles have as much concept behind them as rubber bands have (see LogoLounge’s trends of 2007), not really meaning anything in particular. It could be a sun, it could be a friendly doodle, but in the end it is just generic, no matter if you slap some gradients on. The choice for a lowercase wordmark is inspired by a feeling of equality between Ageas and its stakeholders, however its ‘accessibility’ is undermined by setting it in DIN with an awkward, logo-ey connection between the “e” and “a” that doesn’t do anything except create an uncomfortable blob where it connects. It simply seems to be there to make the wording look like more of a logo.

Designed by the Brussels advertising firm Famous, the new identity is slowly starting to pop up on the web. In the for-internal-use-only video on YouTube the logo is used as the sun, signaling a brand new day, maybe more so for the beleaguered company than for its prospective clients. Much can be saved in the visual style that still has to be rolled out, but the logo so far does not promise a sunny day.

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As the financial crisis rages over the world, its consequences are becoming evident in identities too. One of them is the disappearance of the iconic Fortis bank logo from the streets of the Benelux (the economic union of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), with its final name carrier Fortis Insurances being rebranded as Ageas. Created from Dutch and Belgian financial institutions in the 1990s, Fortis at some point ranked number 20 on the Fortune 500 list. After a string of unfortunate events Fortis found itself effectively collapsing and its parts were sold. This past April, the remaining stand-alone insurance activities renamed itself Ageas — derived \"from the Latin word 'agere,' meaning action, drive, and a conviction to forge ahead,\" according to this lengthy name explanation. Still being a considerable business, Ageas now employs 11,000 people with an annual inflow of around EUR 16 billion.

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners