CASE STUDY: NISSAN's NEW LOGO

 Country of Origin: Japan

Industry: Automotive

So.... Nissan has a new logo. Perhaps you're just recently seeing it. Probably a better question is, "how long ago was it unveiled, and is it still 'new?'" Well, this graphic is actually almost a year old, first rolled out in June of 2020. But the process of unveiling a logo, and specifically of UPDATING A BRANDING DESIGN, is fairly complex and would probably make a good story in and of itself here at the Logo Inspector sometime. But it is an ongoing process.

What logos do best is working as a sort of instant activator of memories, feelings, thoughts, emotions and experiences of a brand-- we can that your own personal BRAND EQUITY. As your relationship with a brand grows, so too does the power of these pieces of art and your ability to recognize them and connect with your thoughts on the company they represent. So what happens when they change the art?

Yes, it can be a slow, and sometimes uneasy process of transferring your connection with one logo to another.

LINE ART

In this case, Nissan has opted for simplification-- it's what we in the business would call ONE COLOR LINE ART or ONE COLOR VECTOR ART. If you're wondering what a 'vector' is, it refers to the way the art is created, and the software in which it was built. More on that some other time. In the case of the Nissan logo above, yes, it is a single color, namely black— but it's also designed in such a way that it can function as multiple colors on varying backgrounds.

This graphic, presumably part of the press release, displays what I mean. The logo can change easily by changing its hue, easily translated to light colors or dark colors or even complex backgrounds because the design itself is not complex. Logos with multiple colors (say, MasterCard) or one very dependent hue (think Twitter's bird) immediately pose challenges to being displayed on certain colors and are much less flexible.

AUTOMOTIVE BRANDING

Perhaps a better question is, why did Nissan change? You might ask, what was wrong with the new one? Especially if you're a Nissan driver and you became very used to seeing that old shield in your driveway or staring you in the face every time you sit down behind the wheel.

Car companies... have a lot— A LOT— of vested interest in branding. It's a major part of their industry. Every company has a badge or shield that typically serves as their primary logo. It's how you know you're seeing a Ford when it's a new make or model you haven't seen before. But even beyond the logo on the hood, every car company also creates branding for EACH SPECIFIC MODEL— typically in the form of word marks on the back of the car, or in some cases a specific iconic logo for individual models. For example, A Ford Mustang not only has its Ford logo, but also the familiar horse graphic as well. Corvettes are another good example.

 

But what kills me with automotive branding, specifically in print and in digital applications, is the way the artwork has been rendered. Obviously when, say, a Nissan logo goes on a car, it's usually in chrome or chrome-like plastic, shiny and beveled and impressive. There's a long history of chrome on cars and branding and all of that, and there's no arguing that it looks great on a car.

But over the past 30 or so years, as graphic design and the tools of the trade have evolved, car makers and the artists working for them have been able to render highly complex logos that capture the look of those chrome shields. What's more impressive is they are still vector art, meaning they will reproduce cleanly in different applications and are not bound by things like file size and resolution. But, again, more on that in another post.

Here's an example, this dated Mazda logo. It's ridiculously chromed out, and perfectly rendered. The process actually uses gradients in very complex ways to sell the illusion of an actual automotive shield, even though this thing would be going on print and advertising applications. But they're not the only ones— basically everyone in the industry starting doing this in, say, the mid 90's, and that's just how it was.

But if that sounds dated, it's because it is. And I think the industry has decided that it was time for a change. Over the past four years or so, we've seen the automotive industry moving away from these heavily stylized brand graphics in favor of the simplified one-color approach. You may ask, "Why?" And I'm sure every company has its own reasons... but if you look at the entire situation as a timeline, it basically lines up with the surge of business in social media, app, and mobile site applications. Those complex graphics tend to break down as they get smaller, and smaller and smaller. Even the Vette logo above looks kind of hard to discern because of the size I chose to display it at. Simple line art is cleaner, more versatile and lots of different sizes and colors, and is also promoting a sense of newness to an industry that always seems to follow each other in terms of aesthetics.

(Case in point, as a young designer I once decided I was going to 'reinvent' the car ad for a local Volkswagen dealer. It was smart, and used white space to associate cars with their pricing, and created hierarchy for different models and the dealers' urgency to sell them. I thought it was really something special. And the dealer HATED it. It just didn't 'look' like a car ad. They follow their formulas and stick to them, because that's what the other guys are doing. Just felt like a story worth sharing.)

Nissan is one of many auto makers that made this change to sharper, cleaner, simplistic vector branding. This article by Dezeen breaks down several and also includes dates to help put together a sort of timeline if you're so inclined.

What I find most interesting about this trend is that, well, the logo itself doesn't often change. The Toyota logo to the left is the same proportions and shapes of the original Toyota logo, it's just rendered in black, or whatever color they choose, instead of being locked into a series of color gradients that make it look VERY much like shiny metal. It's mostly cosmetic.

BACK TO NISSAN

Except when it's not.

In the case of Nissan, they didn't just 'simplify' the brand. They did actually redesign the elements. If I had to guess why, it's because that bar and circle on the old mark is, well, kind of boring, or at least WAS/IS boring when rendered in simple black. You'd also be left with a black bar and necessary reverse white text, ALL the time, which might defeat the purpose of simplifying for lower screen resolutions and such.

What I see as a designer, though, is much more purposeful. I think the biggest difference I see in the new vs old logo is the scale of the name within the art. Look at the two logos below. The green square is basically the footprint of the logo; it represents how much vertical and horizontal space, in pixels, the logo will make up.

Now observe the red boxes. That's the part of the footprint used to render the brand name. See how much smaller it is on the left as opposed to the new one on the right? It may not seem noticeable when up close or rendered large, but as that logo gets smaller and smaller, the name becomes less prominent. It's also just good branding design, because the larger and less bold font (along with the cleaner line art rendering) helps drive it home and remain recognizable, and ultimately, more memorable.

What my box graphic above illustrates is a breakdown of the real estate within a logo. Good logo designers are very cognizant of how they use the space they occupy— with name text, with graphic elements, and even with how much empty white space the mark takes. In this case the name was designed to be much more prominent and yet still is similar enough to the original that it won't feel like a full-on departure of the brand you're connected with.

So all in all, it's not a sea change, but rather part of a trend. And a pretty solid job on the designer's part to make good use of the opportunity to clean up some other things as well. I mean, seriously, I can't be the only one who was put off by those slanted mid slab elements of the 'S' in the old logo. See how the middle of the S's isn't parallel with the baseline of the text? Sure, it's unique, but it just kind of bothered my aesthetic sensibilities and felt unbalanced.

What do you all think? Is this good? What would you have done differently? Do you think the industry will shift again in another 10-15 years?

And yes, for what it's worth... I am a Nissan driver. And my brand experience is absolutely affected the lousy stock sound system in my car.

Sources include: Dezeen.com, carlogos.org, and Google.

CASE STUDY: WORLD WILD FUND FOR NATURE

 Country of Origin: Switzerland

Industry: Conservation/Wildlife Preservation and Research

This is the famous logo of the World Wide Fund for Nature. Yes, that's right-- that's not even the same name you think this organization had. Same here-- it was only while writing this study up that I learned they recently changed their name from World Wildlife Fund to World Wide Fund of Nature. But this is a recently new development, right? Yeah, still no. This has been their name since 1987, and most likely predates our own exposure to the brand.

If you're a Gen X person like myself, chances are the first time you'd heard of the World Wildlife Fund was when they successfully forced the World Wrestling Federation to change its name somewhere around the year 2000. Actually they had an agreement in place for years to let the brands co-exist, but changed their stance when the wrestling league violated the terms. Perhaps they didn't like Jake the Snake Roberts' handling of his pets in the ring?

At any rate, the WWF is an international group that advocates for the ethical treatment of animals and nature, specifically the defense of endangered species and the proper stewardship of the earth by the human race. How successful they are in these pursuits remain to be seen, and we won't even get into the scandals and controversies that have swirled around the organization. Let's just focus on that beautiful logo.

HISTORY

The WWF's iconic logo was first developed in the early 60's, when the brand was developing its mission and wanted a symbol that would promote its mission as an animal rights group with a distinct global footprint. The group was the brainchild of several prominent influential leaders, captains of industry and even princes-- founding members include a Rockefeller and the recently deceased Prince Philip. Also in this group was famed British conservationist Sir Peter Scott, who came up with the idea of using a panda as the group's logo, inspired by the first Great Panda put on display in a western zoo in London just a few years before. He developed the first simple sketch to the left, which would later be developed into this one color line art treatment on the right:

 

(SIDE NOTE: I recently read elsewhere, on the fantastic and always well-documented Today I Learned Reddit page, that all pandas in zoos remain the property of the Chinese government and come at a hefty fee of $1 million per year or more. Basically zoos around the world 'rent' the pandas to live in their facilities. Just thought that was worth mentioning, tangent over)

COLOR

So, at any rate, the panda was chosen and a simple black and white illustration was developed. It was simple and efficiently captured the look and feel of this amazing creature that had a bit of buzz surrounding it in swinging London, but there was also an ancillary motive for its choice of palette. Quite simply, the founders of this new WWF felt they could save a bit of money by keeping the mark a simple one color line art black on white. This makes sense, for at the time most publications were partially full color at best, printing the bulk of its pages in black and white or one-color spot applications. Frugal, even for princes and Rockefellers!

EVOLUTION

Time over the next half century would see the logo evolve, moving away slowly from a fairly literal pen and ink illustration of the asian ursine creature, and becoming something more abstract and elegant. I wouldn't exactly call the initials of the group's anagram a word mark, per se, but the initials were added and the typography would see a few changes of late. But obviously, the only reason we're even looking at this today is because of that branding redesign in 1986.

The updated logo was created by Jerry Kuyper of Landor & Fitch, San Fransisco (I believe at the time it was simply Landor). According to Jerry, his brief included the simple request of "not making it look too cuddly, too ferocious, or like it was about to go extinct." Obviously his final solution is smart, clever, and most importantly, simplified and yet instantly recognizable. The illustration doesn't get in the way of itself, and uses the space around itself impeccably. Which gets us to the real conversation most people end up having about it.

THE WHITE SPACE

Lots of people have had plenty of things to say about the design concepts used in the creation of this mark. And I suppose none of these ideas are wrong. Some people will call it Gestalt Design, which basically describes its ability to use separate individual shapes and pieces to drive home a single unified idea.

Others might suggest it uses what is known as Amodal Perception, which promotes the idea that human viewers tend to visualize complete objects even if part of them are obscured or not included. Take, for example, the circle to the left. Our tendency to see things "Amodally" suggests that even though the object is multifaceted and has several flat edges and an outer curved shape, what our brain sees is a circle with a rectangle sitting in front of it. We essentially see something without having to see all of it.

If it were up to me, and what I have taught in the past, however, I'd say this logo is perfect example of the concept of Incomplete Closure. This basically means that a shape, or line, or object, or some thing is created in the illustration without entirely creating it. You might use two lines that do not actually meet, but they are close enough in proximity and movement that your brain connects them as part of the same thing, and you might see them as a square corner, etc. They're fun because they create complexity and visual interest-- you see things even though your brain might be telling yourself it's not what you think it is.

In this particular case, we're talking about the top half of the graphic-- the bear's back and head. It's really not there, is it? The white space around the logo invades the interior of the space, and some of those black shapes for the eye patches and ear are just floating in space, aren't they? Well, they are, technically-- but no, they're not. Your brain sees them exactly where it thinks they should be, because it's 'closing' those incomplete shapes, and seeing it as an entire bear.

Take, for example, this shape to the right. You still see a bear, right? Well sure, you're conditioned to it now. But try to see it as JUST A BLACK SHAPE, and not as the thing with the white and black areas. Try covering up the 'ear' part, or squinting your eyes until you no longer see the mouth. Slowly, but surely, you start to see this round black shapes. They kind of look like talons or bird claws or something. Maybe. But you're no longer seeing a bear. Well that's what makes this logo so successful-- with a few well placed, well-drawn objects of single color line art, the designer created the perfect illusion of very recognizable and familiar animal. It just works, and the more you look at it, the more you continue to admire the solution of it all. And you certainly don't forget it.

What do you all think? Is it interesting? Is it memorable? Does it represent what you think it should be? How would you have solved this differently?

Or are you just an old school wrestling fan that resents this organization and what it meant for Vince McMahon's business model? If that's the case, I'll leave you with this fairly fun tee design, which was obviously created as an inside joke for designers, wrestlers, or both:

Thanks for the interest!

Sources include: 1000logos.net, logodesignlove.com, pentagram.com, funny junk.com