The Old Bank – Creating a brand for a bar and restaurant with a unique story

The Old Bank

 

When it comes to creating a brand for a bar and restaurant in today’s busy world, it’s really important to find elements of the business that tell a unique story and bring the business to life across communication, the environment and the overall experience. During our initial conversations with the Old Bank, we went and visited the Grade II listed building that they were in the process of renovating, transforming it into a new bar and restaurant. The building itself had previously been the central bank in the area built in the early 1920s and the original imposing historic architecture of giant fluted ionic columns and bronze doors had remained in a perfect condition. These authentic attributes were a key element that we were keen to maintain and build on in our design process.

 

The Design Elements

 

Thus the name of The Old Bank came to fruition. As part of the brand concept we aligned all the design elements to the theme of banking and money in order to retain the heritage of the building and ensure that the business’ vision of creating an ‘experience people would remember’ would be able to come to life.

The origin of the typeface stemmed from the essence of the building itself, we were actually able to match the typeface on the building’s face to the typeface we created for the brand, intrinsically interweaving the originality of the building into the brand. When it came to creating the logo mark we took inspiration from the inside of the building, combining elements of the 20th century architecture as well as alluding to the key features of the product offering such as cocktail glasses.

 

The Old Bank Colour Palette

 

When devising the Old Bank colour palette, we took our inspiration from money and the variety of bank notes that exist within British currency. We used the origin of bank note production i.e. the Royal Mint as an inspiration for the royal blue base colour of the brand and then brought in highlights of the bank notes ranging from a £5 note to a £20 note across the note colours of green, orange, purple and red. Again, this allowed us to discreetly tie the brand back to the building’s heritage and history.

As a result of bringing all these key elements together, we created a flexible brand platform to match the flexibility of the space itself, catering to a range of taste buds as well as a variety of customers. The brand itself brings an element of class aligned to the building’s heritage whilst at the same time integrating vibrancy, flexibility and adaptability in line with the environment and the variety of customers.

If you’re interested in creating a meaningful brand, get in touch today.