McKinsey Logo PNG
McKinsey & Company is a US management consulting firm working with organizations across the private, public, and social sectors offering advice on strategic management. Vault Rankings has named it the most prestigious consulting firm in the world more than once.
Meaning and history
The overall style of the McKinsey logo has remained pretty much the same over the past few decades. In this way, the company lets its customers know that they can expect the same quality of service no matter what. However, more recently, the brand has slightly tweaked its visual identity.
What is McKinsey & Company?
McKinsey & Company is the name of an American consulting firm, which was established in 1926 by James O. McKinsey, and by today has grown into one of the Big Four companies in financial consultancy, operating all over the globe.
1939 – 2019
The history of the brand started in 1926 in Chicago. The original name, James O. McKinsey & Company, came from the name of the founder, who used to be a professor of accounting at the University of Chicago. Initially, the firm specialized in giving advice about how to use accounting principles as a management tool.
Another important person in the history of the company was Marvin Bower, who is believed to have established the values and principles of modern-day McKinsey and its corporate culture.
When it comes to the old brand identity of McKinsey, we can clearly see that it wasn’t experimental at all. Far from that. It was a simple and elegant wordmark in a rather generic serif typeface. Although “generic” is not a fault here – the type was deliberately chosen to look that way. It was neither bold nor thin. The initials and the “K” were capitalized, while all the other letters were lowercase, which was totally in line with grammar rules.
To sum up, the wordmark represented safety and know-how. If this logo could speak, it would say: “You can trust our expertise” or “We know how things should be done.”
2019 – present
The company slightly modified its logo citing the need to “communicate the need between old and new, heritage and modernity.” The new brand identity is based on the “high contrast” principle, as the corporate website explains. To be precise, this is the contrast between things in the company that are changing and things that remain the same, for instance, the “commitment to hiring and developing exceptional people”.
The most notable update is that the wordmark has been realigned. This time, the lettering “&Company” has been placed below “McKinsey” and has been slightly moved to the right so that the words form a sort of steps.
The differences in the typeface aren’t so obvious. However, if you put these versions side by side, you will certainly notice the fresh, edgy nuances, like the unique serif on the top end of the “c” or the unusual top end of the “a”.
All told, the overall look and mood haven’t changed much.
Colors and font
While the company preserved blue as its main color, the shade is slightly different. It is a deep, dark hue, which creates a contrast with the clean, white background. As the brand puts it, such a contrast helps to reduce the visual noise all of us come across on a daily basis, and “nods to the clarity of thought we hope to bring our clients”.
That said, we should acknowledge that the difference between the colors in the old logo and the 2019 version is very subtle. Even a side-by-side comparison can hardly reveal it to the layperson’s eye.
The custom font in the McKinsey logo is called Bower. According to the explanation on the corporate website, the glyphs are “intentionally characterful and bold”, which is supposed to assist the text to “cut through”.
