Manulife Financial Corporation, the Canadian financial services group headquartered in Toronto, unveiled its current logo in November 2018 as part of a global brand update. The refresh was described by the company as the most significant brand update in its 130-year history, with a cleaner and more streamlined look intended to embody Manulife’s focus on simplifying the complex for customers.[1]
Design and History
The 2018 logo was the 11th in Manulife’s 130-year history, with the previous version having been introduced in 2014.[2] The older mark featured three white trapezoids standing vertically inside a green square, with the three shapes evoking the letter “M” in a minimalist fashion.[3]
The new logo is a variation on that classic design: the three trapezoids are no longer confined to a square and are now coloured green.[3] The refreshed identity was described as representing the company’s transformation into a digital, client-centric market leader.[4]
Over its history, the logo evolved from the hand-drawn nineteenth-century illustrations of the Manufacturers Life Insurance Co. through the blockier designs of the 1960s and 1970s to the simplified green box of recent years.[5]
Meaning and Symbolism
The icon preceding the company name represents the “M” in Manulife.[6] The updated version introduced a new green that Manulife’s global chief marketing and experience design officer, Francesco Lagutaine, said contained “greater optimism” and was felt to be “more in line with the times.”[2]
Typography and Design
The 2018 update introduced a new proprietary Manulife typeface that Lagutaine said worked much better in digital mediums than the old one. He noted that the previous logo “was still done in a way that kind of reflected the old way in which we engaged, which was heavily paper-based, heavily on document style.”[2]
The design of the new look originated in Asia, specifically from the in-house team Lagutaine built in Hong Kong, rather than from an external agency.[2]
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