Do you remember Midland Bank?
On a recent trip to Hammersmith, I saw something of a blast from the past. The cash machines in the Broadway advertise themselves as being available for customers of, amongst others, Midland Bank. So old was the sign that it had the griffin-in-a-circle motif rather. Midland was, as we know, bought by HSBC; before the name changed from Midland to HSBC, the logo changed.
Santander has bought Abbey National and is now buying Alliance & Leicester. I would not be surprised if the two were merged into a single entity under the 
Santander name; Cahoot, Abbey’s online arm, may also be included. Abbey National’s ‘couple under a brolly’ logo has already gone to be replaced with Santander’s flame and the name has already changed from Abbey National to Abbey.
I don’t think it makes a huge amount of difference to the passenger on the Clapham omnibus which gigantic, international company looks after their money. It’s interesting to note, though, what the different logos mean. Presumably Midland Bank’s griffin was to show its tenacious defence of depositors’ interests, although its strapline, ‘The Listening Bank’ also made good use of the beast’s ears. Abbey National’s umbrella was presumably meant to make people think about saving for a rainy day. The Santander ‘flame’ device is probably something about bank clerks burning the midnight oil rather than burning your money, although in current circumstances it could mean ‘bank with us and you’ll have enough money to burn a small amount of oil’. The HSBC logo is a throwback to the company’s Scottish roots.
xD.
PS - while randomly googling for this post, I stumbled across this website: logoRIP.com. It’s worth taking a look for logos of days gone by.
July 15th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
My Conservative Party membership card still has the old logo on it (the Welsh version where instead of a torch there is a dragon). My local branch is pretty right wing you see.