Hargreaves Lansdown is a Bristol-based investment platform and financial services firm serving private investors in the United Kingdom. The company’s visual identity is built around a typographic wordmark in dark blue, a design that has been in place since a 2018 brand refresh.
Design and History
In February 2018, Hargreaves Lansdown unveiled a new corporate identity designed to modernise the brand and support future expansion. The refresh included a new company logo, a redesigned website, and app updates intended to make the firm’s digital channels “faster, simpler and more accessible.” New fonts were introduced throughout, described as larger and easier to read.[1]
Chris Worle, then digital strategy director at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the evolving identity was a response to changing client behaviour, noting that people were “increasingly choosing digital and mobile channels.” He described the refresh as providing “a more relevant experience for our clients” while keeping the firm’s purpose unchanged: “to empower people to save and invest with confidence.”[1]
The company said the new identity would help it stand out in a “crowded market” and prepare for a new phase of growth.[1]
Meaning and Symbolism
The Hargreaves Lansdown logo uses confident capital letters and a dark blue colour to portray the brand as stable and reliable, according to a 2023 analysis by the design studio Definition. The same analysis notes that this solidity is balanced by a fresher secondary colour palette and a playful typographic visual style elsewhere in the brand system.[2]
The firm was established in 1981 by founders Peter Hargreaves and Stephen Lansdown, and the company’s official website describes its purpose as “to make it easy for people to save and invest for a better future.”[3]
Typography and Design
The current Hargreaves Lansdown wordmark is set in capital letters, a format that contributes to the brand’s confident, stable appearance.[2] The 2018 refresh introduced new fonts across the brand’s communications, chosen for improved legibility with larger, easier-to-read lettering.[1]
No external design agency has been publicly credited for the 2018 logo refresh in the available sources. The identity work was announced directly by the company, with internal staff quoted on the rationale behind the change.[1]
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