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Brand identity
Strengthened, streamlined and simplified; our refreshed brand identity sets us up for success.
HSBC is one of the world’s best-known brands. For millions, our name is known and trusted with their most valuable assets; their financial wellbeing, the people they care for, and the businesses they run.
We help people thrive and flourish, creating possibilities that cross borders, continents, and cultures, from helping them to own their own homes to helping their businesses expand into new markets.
To do this, we drew inspiration from our business purpose, 'opening up a world of opportunity' and built a brand world that opens up through imagery, motion, and animations. A world where HSBC is cinematic and expansive - where its key distinctive assets become the canvas for those experiences, and are delivered through our range of global services and channels.
By using what makes us recognisable, we’ve created a simple brand identity that allows us to tell our many diverse stories in relevant, recognisable, digital-first and accessible ways. Our creative work leads with our distinctive assets, reinforcing our brand identity in our audiences minds.
Distinctive assets go beyond a brand name like McDonalds' 'Golden Arches', or the Coca Cola bottle. Our Hexagon, unique colour combinations, typography, sonic and photographic style are some of our distinctive brand assets and are used confidently and proudly.
Honouring our past to shape our future
We’ve reinforced our brand identity using the Hexagon as its anchor. By simplifying and taking a single-minded approach to using our most distinctive assets, eg, the Hexagon and HSBC Red, we aim to create stronger recall and emotional bonds with our customers.
Streamlined, simplified and strengthened
Our global creative community collaborated with the Brand team to develop a streamlined, simplified, and strengthened brand identity. Together, we’ve found ways to unite our visual worlds. We’ve also made our brand easier for our colleagues and customers to use with a simple toolkit that were designed to create distinction and drive awareness and recall whenever our customers need us.
We’ve found a way for different services to live under one cohesive identity, with just the right amount of flexibility that each feels special, but proudly part of our Masterbrand. From mass retail to ultra-high net worth, asset management to life insurance, and from small start-ups to large enterprises, our brand is the cornerstone of everything we do.
Our international business and customers are synonymous with HSBC and are some of the things that make us stand apart from other banks. They’ve helped us develop an identity that’s both known globally and is locally relevant.
Digital-first design
We’ve gone to great lengths to create a digital-first brand identity, ensuring that our design frameworks are usable, accessible, and fit for purpose. Through our Sandbox Programme, for example, digital toolkits are shared among our global design community for testing. Their thoughts and feedback allow us to collaboratively shape our identity, building toward a shared goal of creating enjoyable, memorable cross-platform experiences for all of our customers.
Ready to grow
Our ability to move ahead as one team under one iconic brand is a game changer for our customers, the communities we serve, and our business. Our refreshed brand identity is central to helping us grow and will generate higher returns on our investments by reducing costs and delivering iconic creative. Being consistent throughout customer journeys means we can offer more services more smoothly, in turn creating much higher conversion and cross-selling opportunities.
Crafted by many to serve all
Our renewed brand identity reflects the many needs of our global creative community and their customers. We have an open design approach that invites the contributions from many hands and minds, across markets and channels. This shaped our updated foundations, helping us to flex where needed and simplify where we could, without sacrificing the customer experience. But we’re not done yet; our brand identity will continue to evolve as we do.
Efficient for everything
Our brand identity is part of a modular Create Design System. Each piece, from a digital button to a print graphic, makes up a part of our overall brand identity. It’s built to be flexible and easy to update. Plus, being connected and sharing ideas with our creative community means there’s less waste and duplication across the network. The design system may not single-handedly get us to our net-zero targets, but it does show that we’re serious about becoming more organised and efficient.
Shaped by principles, driven by purpose
Following these brand design principles will help us to nurture and protect our brand, and make sure we’re consistent, wherever we show up. Our brand is only ever the reflection of customer expectations, as well as the customer experiences we deliver. When these two things meet, our brand is iconic and memorable. When there’s a gap, our brand becomes fragmented and forgettable. It's our job to make sure customer expectations and experiences are always closely connected with our brand. So, our designers:
- Make it proudly HSBC: there’s only one HSBC logo, it’s our most valuable and iconic asset, and helps us to stand out
- Use distinctive assets: these are our brand foundations and what makes us unique and iconic
- Embrace our angles: strengthening our iconic hexagon includes using its angles throughout customer experiences and creative
- Lead with red: it’s the combination of our hero red, and supporting white, black and greys, that makes us unique, recognisable and memorable
- Express internationalism: we help our customers to see the world the way we see it, through cinematic and expansive imagery and experiences
- Showcase our open, inclusive and human values: we demonstrate this through the people and subjects we use and with digital-first design
It's time for action
Our identity encourages world-class creativity in all the communications and experiences we create. The brand toolkit, guidelines and assets enable our teams to do the best work possible, work that lives up to our purpose and values. Every design decision we make affects both the impression our brand makes and our performance. If it isn’t serving our customers then we raise the bar, making sure we keep on 'opening up a world of opportunity'.
Explore more
Diversity and inclusion
Connecting people, ideas and capital with our borderless approach to banking.
Creative Hexagons
How we laid the foundations for using our Iconic Hexagon in a creative, collaborative way.