CommerzbankCopied

Commerzbank's 2009 logo was born out of crisis and conquest. The Frankfurt bank had taken over Dresdner Bank that January for around five billion euros, as manager magazin reported, and needed two state capital injections totalling 18.2 billion euros to manage it, leaving the German government owning 25 percent plus one share. A merged bank needed a merged face, and chief executive Martin Blessing told Horizont that a new bank must set visibly new signs.

The guiding principle was continuity for both sets of customers. Blessing said the top goal was that every customer would recognise their old bank in the new one, using the brand equity of both houses. To manager magazin he put it more personally: the bank took elements from both institutions so customers and staff could find themselves in the new brand, which he said mattered deeply.

The result fuses them literally. The new mark pairs the Commerzbank name in black, in a new typeface, with a three dimensional ribbon folded into a triangle in Commerzbank yellow. That ribbon is an adaptation of the green Ponto eye, the symbol Dresdner Bank adopted in the 1970s under chief executive Jürgen Ponto, who was murdered by the Red Army Faction. Manager magazin summed it up: the green Ponto eye is history and rises again in yellow, ending nearly 140 years of Dresdner Bank as a name.

The identity launched with a new claim, Gemeinsam mehr erreichen, roughly achieving more together, replacing Commerzbank's Ideen nach vorn and Dresdner's Die Beraterbank, according to Horizont. It debuted on television during the weather sponsorship of ZDF's heute journal, with a yellow umbrella bouncing through an animated landscape, and on stadium boards at a German cup match. Blessing put the cost of the changeover at 50 million euros, part of two billion in restructuring costs. More than 1,200 branches were to be converted, while Dresdner branches in Dresden itself kept their old name for trademark reasons.

This is one of the more elegant merger marks of its era. Most acquisitions simply erase the target's identity; borrowing the Ponto eye and recolouring it in the buyer's yellow was a gesture of respect that also gave Commerzbank a far stronger symbol than the one it had. The 3D rendering dates it to the glossy late 2000s, and the black wordmark is a little heavy. But the core idea, a folded ribbon joining two histories, was smart enough to outlast the fashion it was drawn in.