Major CT company rolls out new logo in age of smartphone communication. It’s name is changing too.

Kenneth R. Gosselin, Hartford CourantHartford Courant

The iconic stag — proud and resolute — traces its roots back 150 years, almost as long as Hartford has been known as a center for insurance.

But the Hartford insurance company’s long-lived logo is now getting a new look tailored for the future and the dramatic shift to digital communication, including the smartphone and watch. The new logo, its designers say, will make it more easily identifiable for everything from a policy to a text alert.

The logo, combined with The Hartford’s name and all in black, will debut Thursday along with a new name for the insurer’s parent company.

The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. will be now known as The Hartford Insurance Group, Inc, reflecting more than a decade of refocusing on its mainstay home, auto and business insurance lines. The company, commonly known as simply The Hartford, was founded in its namesake city in 1810 as The Hartford Fire Insurance Co.

“The new brand celebrates The Hartford’s strength, built on centuries of trust from businesses, workers and people we support every day,” Christopher Swift, the insurer’s chairman and chief executive, said, in a statement. “The modern design points to our bold future, inspired by innovation and a relentless focus on our customers.”

Accompanying the rollout of the new design, The Hartford also announced that it would increase its philanthropic giving by 30% helping to support small businesses, revitalize main streets in historic downtowns and address mental health stigma in the workplace.

In the new design, the stag is repositioned to face left— a nod to the company’s past — but the creature’s head is turned right, symbolizing a focus on the future. The positioning of the stag departs from past logos and is more streamlined than more recent versions that incorporated a hillside, mountains and blue skies.

The stag is placed to the the left of the more dominant name of the company in both upper and lower case letters, also a change from using all capital letters.

“Capital letters are very nice,” said Michael Beirut, a graphic designer and partner at New York-based Pentagram Design, which developed the new logo. “But I think upper and lowercase kind of feel a bit more conversational, a bit more the way you would type an email or how you would get correspondence.”

It also is meant to convey communication that “isn’t paternalistic, that doesn’t feel like we’re going to dictate what you need to do, but we’re there to support you,” Beirut said.

The horizontal, rather than vertical design of past logos, is intentional to make it more compatible with digital designs. Horizontal images take up less space than vertical ones, so recipients on a digital platform don’t have to scroll down so far to see a message, Beirut said.

Even though the logo is in all black — meant to convey stability — other colors will likely be incorporated depending on the use. They include claret — a shade of maroon — for heritage and fuchsia to represent a modern way of thinking. Those colors will be enhanced by white and warm gray.

The Hartford has a global workforce of 18,700, all but 200 in the United States. In Connecticut, The Hartford employs about 5,100, with thousands in Hartford. A company spokesman said the insurer does not break out employment for the city, but noted the Connecticut numbers include both hybrid and full-time remote jobs.

The Hartford has been a fixture on Asylum Hill since the 1920s with its striking, Neo-Classical Revival-style headquarters distinctive for its two-story Ionic portico, low central dome.

In 2021, The Hartford fended off a $23 billion takeover attempt by Zurich, Switzerland-based Chubb Ltd. The buyout offer sent shockwaves through the city even as it pushed to recover from the economically-damaging pandemic.

The move by The Hartford to create a more streamlined look for its logo follows others in recent years, including Lincoln Financial, which has offices in Hartford. In Lincoln’s case, the image of Abraham Lincoln is more clearly defined with a more bold orange in the background.

It is not known when the stag became The Hartford’s logo, but it earliest known use was on an 1861 homeowner policy issued to Abraham Lincoln. It depicts a hart fording, a deer crossing, a stream, an image likely inspired by the seal of the city of Hartford. By 1867, the logo began to echo the stag depicted in Sir Edwin Landseer’s 1851 painting, “The Monarch of the Glen.”

The stag has a powerful pedigree in Hartford, with one perched atop the Corning Fountain in Bushnell Park. More recently, a massive stage statue was placed in Dunkin’ Park, the city’s minor league ballpark, where The Hartford has been a longtime sponsor.

Pentagram’s Beirut said the evolution of the stag takes on a different dimension as opposed to an inanimate object such as Prudential’s rock or Apple’s apple, however well-known they may be.

“When your symbol is a living thing like the stag, it raises the question of how does a living thing change over time,” Beirut said. “That opened people’s minds to the idea that it has been evolving since its introduction in the 19th century. It would continue to evolve today to meet whatever needs you’ve got.”

Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at kgosselin@courant.com.