The History and Evolution of Automobile Logos
Visual identify is more important than a lot of people believe. A logo doesn’t simply represent a brand, it often has multiple meanings and can even trace the history of a company. Many companies are resistant to changing a logo. They may have either spent a lot of money branding, or they’re concerned about the cost and effort required when rebranding.
I’m a firm believer in making improvements to your logo to keep it both relevant to the growth and maturity of your company – as well as keeping it modern and relevant to your audience. If there’s one industry where a logo change is expensive – it’s the automobile industry. Logos aren’t just on every piece of collateral, they’re found everywhere on your car.
Take a look around next time you get in your car… at the hood, the door lamps, the floor mats, the glove compartment, the trunk, the wheel axles, even in the engine compartment. And now with high resolution displays, they’re digitally represented as well. Mine even spins around and flies into the screen.
If you scrutinize these logos, you’ll see that they almost always have some kind of dimensional look and feel to them. I suppose that’s almost a requirement since they’re built into every car. Traditional logo designers often hate that because they used to ensure logos looked good on black & white, on a fax machine, on through to a wall painting. Those days are far behind us, though.
As logos continue to evolve, I’m not sure they’ll ever go full animated… but I do think they’ll continue to have depth and dimension to them. Even flat designs had layers of depth.
Included in the infographic are Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin, Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Fiat, Ford, Mazda, Nissan, Peugot, Renault, Škoda, Vauxhall, and Volkswagon. I’m adding Chevrolet after the infographic for those of us on the other side of the pond.