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Nordea was formed around the turn of the millennium from a run of Nordic bank mergers, and its sail symbol was created to build a single identity across the countries. By 2016 the bank's head of group marketing and communications, Helena Andreas, said the world had changed: customers were digital, the dialogue with them was closer, and the sail no longer represented the bank. The timing was awkward; Bureaubiz noted Nordea had just taken an image hit over its role in the Panama Papers.

Swedish agency Bold, part of The North Alliance, worked on it for about 18 months. The sail went. The letters, previously a bit compact, were straightened and made rounder and clearer, the blue was new, and the palette widened with warmer colours alongside a new typeface. The unifying device is a pulse, which Andreas described as a bank with a human and financial pulse, meant to bring life and movement and to link physical and digital.

Rollout was slow and frugal by design. The identity appeared first in external marketing and digital channels, and on nordea.com in late October with an animated pulse, while branches, letterheads and national websites waited. Andreas said new material would carry it from now on in a natural replacement process taking several years; MKSE noticed the old sail still sitting in the favicon.

Kampanje reported the sail that had defined the logo was going, replaced by a pulse like symbol alongside a new typeface and palette. Nordea's marketing chief explained that the sail was born when building one identity across the Nordic countries mattered most; with customers now digital and in closer dialogue, a mark about the pulse of that relationship felt more relevant. The rollout started in external marketing and digital channels, with old signage replaced only as it wore out, which the bank stressed was cost effective. Sensible economics, though a heartbeat is a strange promise for a bank.

The pulse is the weak link. A heartbeat line is the most generic digital-energy symbol going, and it says little about money. The wordmark, though, is a real improvement, cleaner and more confident than the cramped original, and losing the sail was correct for a bank trying to look less like a ferry line.