Credit Union 1 asked us to refresh their brand identity. The ask was to refresh, or evolve, not to create something completely new. They wanted a new look that would better represent their new investments and deeper investments in new innovations, and that was more aligned to the exciting new look of the South Anchorage center.
Alaska has such a rich and storied history that continues today and we wanted to develop a framework for CU1 to bring the stories of their members into the brand and marketing. We took the strong numeral one of their previous brand and squared it. We then developed a pictorial graphic system, using the square frame, that could extend the new logo from a singular brand mark to a story telling device. The square system is also a one-to-many communication, speaking to the credit union as a collection of singular members and their collective story as a community. We developed a few ways, or variations of the story telling system from the simple pictorial squares to a more complicated square that is divided into three parts/images using a gestural simplification of the façade design for the new South Anchorage center. The new squared logo acts as the anchor for storytelling through the pictograms.