Sergeant Walnuts has rebranded Manchester Building Society with a colourful local map and a chunky M. Founded more than 100 years ago, Manchester Building Society (MBS) merged in 2023 with Newcastle Building Society, although the two separate brands remain. By then, MBS was a moth-balled business with no branch network. The company’s head of brand Andrew Nicholson and his team have been working on how it should relaunch since mid-2024. Sergeant Walnuts won the job following a competitive pitch against other local agencies, with Nicholson keen that the new brand identity was rooted in its home city. “We were very keen that the creative direction and brand identity represents Manchester, and that Mancunians would recognise themselves in it,” he explains, rather than, “something that’s imposed on them.” The aim was for the brand to look different to other banks and building societies Also, it needed to look unlike other banks and building societies. “The world doesn’t need another faceless, placeless navy-blue bank,” Nicholson says. There was no pressure to connect the new identity with its sister company’s look and Nicholson was keen to give MBS its own visual presence. “The brands are very different, and the strategy for retail is very regional,” he says. And the new identity didn’t need to pay any homage to MBS’s previous look – a blue and yellow affair with a tick and a couple of ellipsoids – which Nicholson’s research revealed to have zero unprompted awareness among local people. Use of colour was an important consideration of the brand “To be kind, it probably looked its age,” says Sergeant Walnuts managing director, Richard Attwater. “There was no equity in the existing brand that we wanted to leverage in any way, so it was a blank canvas.” MBS plans to open a flagship city centre flagship branch in a former Diesel store later this summer. Core branch design is by M Worldwide in London, with detailed architectural work by MWE Architects in Stocksfield, Northumberland. Spatial design, interiors and branding were developed by Nicholson’s in-house team working with Sergeant Walnuts. Over time the brand hopes to have a footprint in up to ten Greater Manchester boroughs as possible. This physical presence informed the design solution. The central design idea for the new brand identity stemmed from the map of Greater Manchester. The designers created a simplified, colourful representation of the area. Use of colour was important, Attwater says. “We wanted it to look like the antithesis of big banks, who are distancing themselves from customers,” he says, pointing out that many of them are fleeing the high street. According to Which? banks and building societies have closed 6,303 branches since January 2015, at a rate of around 53 a month. This represents 64% of the branches that were open at the start of 2015. The M was designed to be modern and different, and give a distinctive icon shape. That map was overlaid onto Sergeant Walnuts’ ‘M’ to create the core logo. Designed in-house, the key was to differentiate it from other Ms, such as those of Metrolink and Metro Bank. “And we were trying to give ourselves a lot of real estate, to house as much of the map as possible,” Attwater says. “We explored many, many Ms, this one felt modern and different, and gave a distinctive icon shape.” Nicolson describes it as having “stature and some heft to it, balanced with the slight playfulness of the colour palette. We’re a business that looks after people’s money, so there needs to be substance.” There was no pressure to connect the new identity with the brand of their sister company The suite of colours – which includes dark red, dark green and beige – was chosen for being bright, complementary and distinct from one another, so all the local boroughs felt represented. The colour palette gives MBS flexibility to “create combinations suggesting different moods and feelings.” So for example it can speak to young people saving for their first home, and older people planning their retirement. “This design system allows us to be nuanced in how we present ourselves,” Nicholson says. Sergeant Walnuts explored many Ms for the logo The wordmark is written in inter. Sergeant Walnuts added a bespoke kick on the downstroke of the ‘l’ in “building” to differentiate it from the ‘u’ and the ‘I’ and improve legibility. “We wanted a widely accessible font that we could deploy across the business – simple, unfussy, slightly utilitarian,” Nicholson says. The building society’s website is being redesigned in-house. Attwater is now commissioning a suite of photography, showing people and places in every borough. The aim is to give “an authentic representation of what it’s like to come from those places”, he says, rather than merely repeating clichés such as the Hacienda nightclub and the city’s nickname, Cottonopolis.