The playful and the procedural: we speak to Hay and Christopher Doyle about their branding process

Over the course of 18 months, Sydney-based design studio Christopher Doyle & Co. have developed the identity for Australian neobank Hay; a bank determined to bring truly modern financing to the 21st century. Thriving within the simplicity of core design principles, Hay’s identity is vibrant and energetic as the result of an exuberant colour palette and logomark. Applied across digital and physical areas, the result of CD&Co’s work is an enormously comprehensive identity with cohesion at its centre. Through a “long (and often frustrating) process,” Christopher Doyle remarks, CD&Co also found Hay’s name, narrowing it down from their original 60 contenders. “These days it’s incredibly difficult to land on simple, familiar words and be able to trademark them,” he explains, “there are a couple of other ‘Hay’ brands out there but nothing in the banking space so we had clearance.”