Story in brief:
Fortis chose to consolidate a portfolio of U.S. "specialty insurance and related businesses" in a more freestanding and publicly traded unit, to be spun out from under the Fortis umbrella as a freestanding company. (See 1998 review of Fortis). Luckily a good name was at hand in "Assurant," created in 1999 to house some smaller Fortis acquisitions in an "Assurant Group."

Credits:
Assurant CEO - J. Kerry Clayton
Identity design - Carbone Smolan

First Impressions:
Every year we get several new globes or 'worldmarks' but I'm often struck by their fresh appeal, in the hands of a good designer. These basketweave bands, in bright Jamaican colors, retain a graphic flatness that helps distance this particular globe from cliché territory. And curving the 'A' forms, to echo the symbol's white space, was a fine touch. (Too many symbol-marks show no design effort to relate wordmark to symbol.)

UPDATE: I was pleased that my fellow jurors for the first Center for Design & Business "ReBrand 100" awards agreed: we recognized the Assurant rebranding with a Best of Show award, announced February 28, 2005.

the name they needed was available...

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