Allica Bank
Throwing Allica’s hat bowler into the banking ring.
The Allica Bank brand transformation. A project that landed on my desk the moment I walked through the door.
Role:
Lead Brand Designer
In-House:
Allica Bank
Fix
As Allica scaled at extraordinary speed, the brand was struggling to deliver and resinate with its customers. Together with a mixture of amazing people, teams and creative studios, we built a new brand system that championed an asset that had made its way into the brand through its first TV commercial. The result is a more approachable, modern take on something as old school as relationship banking – delivering across every touchpoint and placing the brand at the forefront of the fintech company.
New identity
Allica was founded with a single mission in its founders mind, to give UK established businesses the banking they deserve. In its brief lifetime, Allica had adopted the shield as its main identifier but with no real connection or relationship between the two which showed within its creative work. The update puts the relationship and connection back into business banking which is also underpinned with award-winning technology and tools, designed especially to make its customers’ lives easier, not harder.
Simplify
Having arrived at the new logo mark we set about defining a consistent approach to the brands ecosystem. As part of refining the core logo, we updated the letterforms within the word mark to bring greater legibility and enable it to work on its own if need be.
Colour
Bringing the colour scheme to the modern day was also another of the objectives – and amplifying colour was key to this work. First things first: giving our orange more punch, being seen as the bold orange hat bank was how we wanted to be perceived. Another was to reduce the icy tones and to add the warmth to a human-centric approach to banking. With the addition of deeper and more approachable neutrals. The secondary palette saw the addition of some confident and fun colours that matched the digital age of challenger banks.
Typeface
Allica’s previous typeface, Mont, was wide on stance and sharp on its apex’s. Great for cutting edge technology – not for a brand that want’s to be a friendly and approachable bank. We were seeking something fresh and something that was a new take on a classic form, adding warm touches and injecting some character and personality. The result? *Insert Matter.ttf* – a typeface that serves everyone, and is critical in the transformation.
Illustrations
Working with 20(S) we developed a comprehensive illustration direction which injects vibrancy through Allica’s brand colour palette and brings a visual expression of ‘charm and warmth’ to Allica’s ecosystem.
Available as both flat and dynamic, these forms work seamlessly to give multiple options for scaleability across the platform. They promote the sectors Allica provide from hospitality and manufacturing to financial services and property.
Photography
At Allica, its customers are the heroes of the story. The imagery puts them centre stage – capturing the real, everyday moments of established UK businesses in action. It's honest, confident and full of purpose – just like them. Through a purposefully sculpted photography direction, we celebrate their ambition, resilience and the environments where they thrive.
Impact
In the first six months following launch, the new brand system was a phased rollout, starting with our website and main touchpoint. One of our main targets was to capture a 10% market share, going up against some much larger banks like Tide and OakNorth. Records are there to be broken, but by H1 we had taken Allica from 3% to 8%!
Still being only five years old, our product hadn’t seen much change and to make the leap into a new brand system would take some time and aims to go live early 2026.