Julius Bär

Julius Bär is one of the big Swiss private banks, headquartered on Zürich's Bahnhofstrasse. Since 2015 Geyst AG has been shaping the bank's corporate design together with it, internally and…

• Client: Bank Julius Bär & Co. AG
• Built by: Geyst AG (Jan Stalder)
• Period: 2021–2023

Julius Bär is one of the big Swiss private banks, headquartered on Zürich's Bahnhofstrasse. Since 2015 Geyst AG has been shaping the bank's corporate design together with it, internally and externally, in still and moving formats.

In private banking the brand is the product. Trust, discretion and excellence have to be felt at every touchpoint, and Julius Bär shows up where art, music and innovation meet, from the Montreux Jazz Festival to Formula E. From 2021 to 2023, at Geyst, Jan Stalder leads two projects for the bank that at first glance have nothing in common. One is invisible: an intranet made of building blocks that lets internal teams build their own pages and prototypes within strict brand guidelines, plus newsletters that render down to Outlook 2010. The other is seen by every client: the year-end card, for which the bank, as Geyst's art director puts it, sets higher standards than for an entire quarterly catalogue.

• Intranet of building blocks, versions 2 to 4 • Guides and training for the teams • Newsletters down to Outlook 2010 • Snow globe 2021 in Maya • Bahnhofstrasse 2022 in Unreal Engine 5 • Render passes for the edit • Two endings, blue and white • Geyst's first 3D work

A brand anyone can build

Before version 2, a new intranet page meant copying the code of the last one and adapting it, and with every copy the brand drifted a little further off course. Jan Stalder leads versions 2 to 4 and turns recurring patterns into blocks that are embedded rather than copied. With guides and training, the teams then build their prototypes in a fraction of the time and always within the brand framework. Olivier Berger, Head Branding & Campaigning at Julius Bär, describes the aim of the collaboration like this: "In an intensive co-creative process, we have created a functional design ecosystem that can be applied flexibly and easily at all key client touchpoints, to achieve a distinctive brand language and consistent client experiences."

2021: a bank in a snow globe

For the year-end card Geyst ventures into something new: 3D. In Maya a stylised snow globe takes shape, the Julius Bär building between fir trees and snowflakes, on a pedestal, all in white, as calm as a snowy night. A separate shot shows the lettering embossed on the facade. In September 2021 the final version is ready, months before anyone gets to see it.

2022: lights over Bahnhofstrasse

The year after, the globe becomes a street. Jan Stalder recreates the building on Bahnhofstrasse in full, with facade, lit windows and furnished offices, and hangs "Lucy", Zürich's Christmas lights, over the street, in Unreal Engine 5. The video sweeps through the sea of lights towards the facade, past the lettering, up to a window with an office bathed in warm light behind it: the bank as a place where it feels good to arrive.

Rather than a single image, the render produces passes: the building, the snow, the windows as a mask, the "Lucy" lights once in colour and once in white. That way each pass can be tuned individually in the edit, until the evening looks exactly the way the bank envisions it.

Less is more, more is less

In June 2022 two cuts are on the table, with exactly these working titles. The final videos from October 2022 run for 20 seconds, open with "Julius Baer's headquarters at the most magical time of year" and end on a blue or a white background with "Season's Greetings and a Happy New Year".

The start of a line

Both cards are delivered, and the intranet work continues until 2023. What begins as an experiment for a Christmas card becomes a discipline of its own at Geyst: the snow globe and Bahnhofstrasse are followed by Floralp, RONAL and Valais, and this line of work leads all the way to the real-time scenes Orbit works with today. Sometimes a new capability begins with the most demanding client.