Global Brand System for ING
AKQA created a flexible global brand system for ING, built from foundational codes that remain meaningful across markets and interactions. Guided by the principles of daring, progressive, and joyous, the identity establishes a coherent, confident, optimistic language of forward momentum.
Insights
- The lion was inherited rather than designed. ING was formed in 1991 by the merger of insurer Nationale-Nederlanden and postal bank NMB Postbank, and the lion had already lived in the logos of predecessor companies going back to a state savings bank whose mark carried two lions. The reading is national: the lion is the symbol of the Netherlands and the orange is the colour of the House of Orange, which makes the logo scan as a flag. It was flattened for digital in 2016, so AKQA was working on a mark that has been evolving rather than one being replaced.
- That heraldic weight is borrowed, though. The mark carries the air of something ancient while the bank itself is only thirty-five years old — the animal does the work of a history the institution has not had time to accumulate.
- The sharpest move is the Blob — the orange shape that had spent years sitting in ING communications as background decoration — evolved into a dynamic framing device that crops photography, figures and interfaces. An element that was lying around is put to work, which is the season's pattern of employing what a brand already owns instead of drawing something new. Fanned out and coloured, it also reads as a signal of range: insurance, travel, a multi-product ecosystem rather than only a bank.
- Under the surface the system is more specific than the visuals suggest: three stated principles (daring, progressive, joyous), a motion language of forward momentum with three named behaviours — Instinctive Character, Radiant Path and Layer Progression — and one set of foundational codes stretched across Retail, Private, Business and Wholesale in forty core markets, with the stated ambition that all of them feel like one.
- The problem being answered is that ING built its name as the ultimate challenger bank, and the category then filled with challengers until that clarity eroded. Worth arguing with: the lion is the most distinctive asset in the whole system and it stays in a supporting role, while a brand that colours in a rainbow to look joyous is competing on a register anyone can copy. The character with the history is the one thing nobody else has.
- There is no mention of AI anywhere in the case's eight points. In 2026 that is less an omission than a position — and a pointed one, given AKQA's own site now answers questions about its work through a chat assistant.
- Worth a caveat: the case was published in August 2026 and everything known about it is the agency's own account — independent press or critique had not appeared yet, so forty markets feeling like one is a promise, not a verified outcome.
