Brief
Arab Financial Services is a payments institution with four decades of history. Longevity is an asset in payments, because it signals stability. It can also become a weight. The market now judges payments companies by how modern they feel as well as how safe they are.
AFS needed to be seen as a modern fintech platform without losing the credibility it had earned. That is a repositioning, and it had to show in the brand.
The identity also had to work in two languages. English and Arabic read in opposite directions, and many brands treat the second language as a translation. AFS wanted them to be equals.
The audience is institutional, including banks, merchants and partners. They would judge the brand on precision. KNC was asked for the bilingual brand system, with art direction to carry it. [confirm: year]
Approach
We designed in both scripts from the first sketch. Logo, type and layout were built to be mirrored, not adapted afterwards. [confirm: bilingual logo construction]
The system moves away from the usual institutional palette. Darkness and a sharp red accent give it energy, and clean space keeps it serious.
Art direction sets the imagery. Pictures show technology and commerce in use, with strong geometry and controlled light, instead of the handshake and skyline photos common in finance.
A modular layout grid works in both reading directions. Headlines, data panels and diagrams flip cleanly between English and Arabic, so a page in one language carries the same weight as its pair. [confirm: grid and templates]
Guidelines explain how each rule changes between scripts, so teams in different regions can produce matching work.
Outcome
AFS received a full bilingual brand system that positions it as a modern fintech platform. [confirm: deliverables and launch date]
The brand now carries one personality in two scripts. Presentations, digital products and corporate material can appear in English or Arabic with the same authority.
For a company with four decades of history, the change is a shift in how it is read. It looks current and still feels dependable.
Reaction from clients and partners was [result]. Adoption across internal teams was [result]. Leadership described the repositioning as [result: client quote].
The system is built to support new services, in both languages, from day one.
A bilingual system also changes how a team works. Designers no longer start in one language and retrofit the other, so both versions of a page now come out of the same decision.