Design Bridge & Partners

Once a brand that lived entirely through advertising, HSBC has turned things around, building a strong, unified global identity. This is how HSBC and Design Bridge have streamlined, simplified, and strengthened the brand over the course of their relationship.

In 2018, HSBC’s brand was fragmented. It felt cold, corporate, disconnected – a sentiment echoed by both customers and internally. The only really consistent element was the logo.

To address this, HSBC made a strategic shift to centre its brand development around a design agency, Design Bridge & Partners, ensuring long-term consistency, rather than relying solely on campaign-driven changes.

HSBC operates from two major hubs: London and Hong Kong. With Design Bridge & Partners also having studios in both locations, along with a network in US, India, and Singapore, the collaboration ensures HSBC’s work resonates on an international scale.

Between 2018 and 2022, HSBC partnered with Design Bridge & Partners for a comprehensive rebranding effort. This initiative aimed to streamline, simplify, and strengthen the identity of the universal bank and financial services group.

Led by the guiding principle of “Opening up a world of opportunity,” the team leveraged the brand’s most distinctive asset, The Hex, turning it into a ‘portal’ for brand expression. By 2021, they had developed a succinct system that was working much harder for the brand.

Custom tools like ‘Hextures’ — a generative tool devised by DB&P to create a series of textures that sit inside the hex — allow HSBC’s internal teams to create assets quickly and at scale, stay within brand guidelines, and actually have fun with the creative process.

The rebrand brought huge upticks in engagement and internal brand usage, marking HSBC's transition from a disjointed ‘house of brands’ to a unified ‘branded house’.