Hyundai Card

Definition of ‘Strategic’ Involved or being a part of consciously developed future planning by using design to achieve the organisation’s aim through visual, functional and conceptual integration of design to create its appropriate external and internal identities, products and service offerings and missions. HyundaiCard (HC), a Korean credit card company Even though HC was late for coming into credit card industries, they made a remarkable growth by design management integrating brand identity. Visual integration by design policy According to Borja de Mozota (2003), strong brand identity can be achieved by visual integration.
As figure 1 below show, HC redesigned their logo and typeface based on the shape, ratio and angle of an actual credit card, perfectly reflecting HC’s identity (Total Active Media, 2004). With strong design policy supervised by ‘HC Design Lab’, the font is applied to all visual channels in the coherent manner for visual integration (Total Active Media, 2004). This reflects philosophy and culture of HC to not only customers but also employees to make strong corporate identity. Figure 1: Typeface ‘You and I’ (Source: Total Active Media, online, 2004) 1 DM5554 Strategic Design Management Functional Integration by card design
Consumers are seeking to express the image of themselves through purchasing a product or service that meets their self-expression and assertion of individuality (Cooper & Press, 1995). Similarly, they designed an integrated card hierarchy system according to user’s different needs. The credit cards are designed using alphabet, number and colour with their font (Song and Bang, 2006). Moreover, they applied different alphabets to card for different benefits (Song and Bang, 2006). For example, the ‘M’ card reflects ‘Multiple benefits’. Number system shows level of services (e. g. ‘M2’ contains more services than ‘M’, and ‘M3’ than ‘M2’).

With colour, they defined premium level of cards (see figure 2). Regarding to card design, customers can understand this concept easily and feel credit cards desirable. By applying design strategy to convey consumers’ lifestyle into product and service, HC successfully fulfills consumers’ needs. Figure 2: Credit Card Hierarchy (Source: Unitas Brand, 2009) Conceptual integration by CSR Design can play important role in achieving CSR for company’s long-term strategic advantage (Koo and Cooper, 2011). As figure 3 below show, HC has been taking various activities for CSR by giving their design talent.
For example, HC designed the ‘dreamlibrary’ for children who have got cancer and leukemia, bus stations for public and ‘Super Concert’ for cultural & arts dispersion (Unitas Brand, 2009). These CSR activities create positive conceptual integration of brand images. 2 DM5554 Strategic Design Management Figure 3: CSR activities (Source: Hyundaicardcapital. com, online, 2011) Conclusion Hyundai Card conducts design resources effectively, developing its external and internal identity, creating its product and service based on consumers’ need. It also enhance positive brand image by contributing to society.