Morgan Stanley

New:  Logo and visual system

Launched:   September 18, 2006

Story in brief:
"We're back on track. We got a little fancy there, for a while; it's time now to return to our authentic roots, set aside our differences, and pull the team together."  This is the implied message that returning CEO John Mack is sending with this very discrete and essentially internally-focused  rebranding.

After a period of corporate turmoil, this is a regrounding in Morgan Stanley's "the quiet company" heritage, refocusing on performance rather than self-promotion (which the logo's triangle was felt to represent).  Carbone Smolan, who had been quietly working on design of event and communication graphics, were well placed to see the needs and the solutions.

For designers it's a particularly interesting case,  for (1) the subtlety of the letterforms redesign, felt more than seen, and (2) the sometimes greater impact of a new visual system, on priority audiences, than of a new logo.

(1)  The letterforms --   the designers note these four changes, hand-drawn to make a more "solid and ownable" mark:
         

(2) The visual system features two new 'brand patterns,' called Chromatic and Watermark.  Leslie Smolan says the Chromatic Pattern (shown here on a 'barrel' canopy sign) "reinvents Morgan Stanley blue" in ten hues.

Credits:
C.E.O. - John Mack
Identity design - Carbone Smolan Agency
 

First Impressions:
Can a less distinctive mark, an almost self-effacing mark, be stronger? You couldn't make a better case than this one.  So... Yes. It is certainly on-message, for "the quiet company."

If the 2001 mark designed by Landor had been more relevant in its distinctiveness, however, I might say No.  In my 2001 review I didn't understand the pointer/triangle or the Morgan/Stanley color differentiation;  I  flippantly, and wrongly,  speculated that "Stanley" was on its way out.  Apparently, few people at Morgan Stanley, either, really understood whether the triangle was supposed to mean something, so it came to mean 'market spin;' to quote Leslie, it was "a graft that didn't take."

Bottom line: If you are blessed with a great name, go with the name. Then use design to express excellence.