NatWest

I worked with a design team at Smith & Milton (a Creative Director, myself and a junior) to create a series of bold, simple and direct display graphics used by NatWest to convey changes in the delivery of the bank’s services to customers.

We then went on to design and write a manual for NatWest branch managers. This explains how they can use press, public relations, direct letters, literature and in-branch displays to communicate the changes to their customers during a period of re-organisation, automation and improvements.

This manual won several prizes including Donside papers’ National Graphic Design Gold award for technical literature and a D&AD pencil award.

After the success of the ‘Delivery Strategy’ project (as it became known) the bank returned to us to design all in-branch literature. At that time the bank’s literature was very text heavy, overburdened with small print and legal jargon. Professional writers were appointed to re-write all the text and Plain English Campaign monitored and oversaw the result, suggesting changes if needed, so that in the end all literature could be accredited with their ‘Crystal Mark’.

NatWest customer booklets literature system is one of the most direct ways that the bank informs and sells its financial products to customers. Displayed together on in-branch stands the covers had to attract attention in a simple and straight-forward way to the correct brochure. For each cover we chose a colour, a single word title and an intriguing image – a simple cut-out. In the process we drew up a set of icons also to steer the reader around each booklet or to point the customer to their next point of contact or to outside sources of information.

We designed the complete range over eighteen months working with Smith & Milton and NatWest’s appointed writers.