Logo design is not easy. At all. You have to distill the entire essence of an organization down into something instantly identifiable, easily reproducible, appealing, eye-catching, everything. It’s far more challenging than I think most people realize. And when it’s not right, everyone can tell, immediately, almost innately. If you don’t believe me, just look at Jaguar’s new logo – and the associated new brand-image campaign – and look at the reactions it’s inspiring, almost none of which are positive. This is feeling like a logo disaster.
Jaguar making a radical and bold change is absolutely a good thing, don’t get me wrong. The brand has been stagnant for some time now, and in desperate need of some sort of reboot. Sure, they have a fantastic history and a legacy of truly iconic cars, but that doesn’t help them sell new cars, which I’m told carmakers enjoy doing. So the idea that Jaguar needs to make a dramatic change is something I absolutely agree with.
I’m just not sure the change should be whatever this is:
Oh boy. There’s a lot there, isn’t there? Let’s just start with the logo:
Now, on some basic design level, I don’t hate this at all; I think the rounded forms are friendly and clean, and the mixing of upper and lower case is playful. It’s approachable and clean, slightly 70s-retro as well. It would be a fantastic logo for, say, a maker of fun budget consumer electronics or perhaps a frozen yogurt brand.
But for a car? For a Jaguar? No.
I mean, I think the old logo was definitely in need of an update; the typography felt stale and dated, and the jaguar itself – the “leaper,” was a bit too complex for an effective logo. It was fine for what it was, but I do agree that an update was in order.
That said, it’s hard to imagine something that feels more wrong than what Jag decided on. As I said, it’s not terrible graphically, but we have to consider what this “device mark” (that’s what Jaguar calls the wordmark logo) feels like and reminds us of, visually, because I hardly think it works as a car brand attempting to compete with Rolls-Royce, Mercedes-Benz, and Bentley.
Here are some other logos that feel very visually similar to the new Jag logo:
So, we have Nintendo’s line of little toys that interact with video games, the stylized typography used for a sci-fi movie about gigantic worms and desert-dwelling drug addicts, and the design of the typography on those Bloomingdale’s bags my Aunt Margie used to always have.
None of these feel like “premium vehicle” to me, electric or otherwise.
Plus, where’s the cat? Why would you get rid of the leaping feline from the logo? That’s the best part! To be fair, the new brand identity does have a place for the leaping jag, shown as a “makers mark” on a striped background that they call “strikethrough” and seems to refer to horizontal line design motifs.
That’s a bit better, and could certainly work well on some sort of rectangular grille. Jaguar also is showing a sort of monogram-like makers mark, too:
Again, not a bad design (if you can get past a sort of monogram that’s JaguaR) but it still doesn’t feel very Jaguar, even if Jaguar wants to make a new idea of Jaguar. I know it’s easy to criticize, because I’m doing that right now so I know, but I still think this logo could have been much, much better.
Here, I’m going to take five minutes to just show you roughly what I mean:
That’s a literal five-minute effort, and I’m not saying this is perfect or even good by any means, but I feel like it captures modernity and Jaguar-ness better than the “device mark” Jaguar put out. Using that new more angular leaper would make it better, but I don’t feel like spending another five minutes doing that. You can imagine it, right?
Okay, that’s just the logo. Let’s get into the brand identity stuff shown in that video I embedded up there. You know, the one with this wacky crew:
Okay, so here’s my big problem with all of this: for something that says “copy nothing,” this is some incredibly derivative stuff. This kind of bold, colorful couture, these saturated-color-monochromatic backgrounds, it’s not new or bold, it’s almost the default go-to when some organization wants to prove how bold and edgy and daring they are.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a little experiment to try. Grab a sample image of one of these Gautier-ish-looking models and do a reverse image search. Let’s try one with this vivid friend here:
…and the results:
There are many, many similar earlier examples of this aesthetic, going back about 20 years or so. There have been plenty of looks like this, the ruffles, the color, the fit, the expression, the overall look. This is not new ground that’s being tread, this is the easiest, most worn path to making people think new ground is being tread.
Some of these references go back even further. Take Temu Tilda Swinton here with her sledgehammer:
She’s not breaking any moulds there; she’s snuggling into a mould that was first used to cast a brand identity back in 1984.
And I think that may be the real problem here: this whole identity and campaign wants so desperately to be seen as shocking or new or novel but it just isn’t. It’s pandering and lazy and while I respect that Jaguar wants to shoot for something artier and unexpected, this just isn’t it.
This kind of artful shocking, using striking, unusual-looking models and visuals that arrest and surprise certainly can be done to sell cars. Citroën figured it out decades ago, for example:
Seriously, can you imagine going on a road trip with this guy?:
After about an hour of listening to his atonal music and listening to him complain about every fucking billboard you pass and refusing to play word games with you and eating his smelly mung beans, noisily, you’d want to ditch this scarlet bore at the first Sheetz you stopped at.
The tone isn’t innovative, it’s smug and elitist and while, sure, that’s part of the Jaguar identity, this is stupidly and derivatively smug and elitist. I suppose there will be people who will say that at least we’re talking about Jaguar now, but I’m not sure that’s so great. Because everyone seems to be talking about how they don’t want whatever Jaguars come out of this.
There needs to be a new idea of Jaguar, no question. Whatever this mess is, though, is not it.
Jaguar, if you want a do-over, I think everyone is okay with that.
The beginning of the end of Jaguar was their decision to go all-in on EVs NOW. This is simply one more nail in the coffin. They had a good run and I for one will miss them.
Drive your Jaguar to a Martian funeral? Sometimes adults need to tell their children how to dress.
Dang this is so blatantly checking all the ethnic/orientation diversity boxes, well except middle-aged white guy, their prime audience, but that’s cool, you go Jaguar, break those mo(u)lds!
Drive your Jaguar to a Martian funeral. Sometimes, people need tl tell their children how to dress.
Marketing degrees were a mistake, give me overcomplicated logos like the early 1900s.
I couldn’t care less about the models or whatever, all luxury brands have models and fashion stuff imbued in their marketing, but if they have all these colors in the advertising and then release their cars in a range of greyscale I will be very disappointed.