Who’s On First Republic’s Lapel Pin?

Others may deem it trivial, but to a banker, the corporate pin on his or her lapel is no small matter. At least not at RepublicBank Corp., whose happy bankers are said to remove their pins at night only to place them on their gray pin-striped PJs. Those bankers have been a little apprehensive since Republic announced late last year that it would be merging with competitor InterFirst Corp. Sure, they were worried about the jobs that would be eliminated in the consolidation. Yeah, they were wondering where their offices would be. But the nagging question, the one they couldn’t leave at the office, was. “What’s going to happen to our pins?!?”

To answer that all-important question, the merging banks, in true Dallas style, formed the Corporate Identity Task Force, which began meeting last December. The CITF leader, Republic’s Jeff (“No-Favoritism-Here”) Johnson, says the group “considered the equity” in those elements that make up corporate identity-things like the typeface used in company letterhead and, of course, the logo on the corporate pin. They debated whether to go with serif or sans serif type; whether to use the Republic “star” or the InterFirst “star-burst.” In the end, the Republic star was preserved and has become the logo of the newly formed First RepublicBank.

Be calm, InterFirst fans. Johnson says there was no table pounding, no shouting. “We just decided that Republic had a longer, more consistent use of the logo. It had more recognition.” And what of the typeface? The task force went with something altogether new, but so similar to the old Republic style that only their art director knows for sure. And what of remnants of InterFirst? “Well, there’s the “First” in the name,” says Johnson.

That doesn’t seem like much. But those who mourn for good ol’ InterFirst can take some comfort in the fact that thousands of Dallasites still call MBank “Mercantile.”