Audi's logo rebrand | Hacker News Reader

Audi's logo rebrand

audi.com

17 pointsfedericoponzi29 comments

I have literally no idea what this is about. Can anyone elucidate?

Also, has any carmaker considered rebranding by, you know, making modern cars a litte less ugly?

Looks like they slightly adjusted the look of those four rings. I can't see the difference to be honest. Either way I think calling this a rebrand is a massive stretch.

I don't think they've called it a rebrand. "Renewing their branding" seems like a longer way of saying it but certainly sounds less extreme.

They're specifying things like proportions of text to the rings, how the tagline should or should not appear, icons that should be used across all digital products, etc.

There's a lot of interesting stuff here.

massive

The global ugliness of cars is amazing. Especially with electric cars. Personally I think Audi does better than most with producing decent looking cars.

Ferarri, Lamborghini, Maserati, Aston Martin (plus Porsche which I'm not a fan of but most people are) have been churning out beautiful cars for nearly 100 years.

Admittedly when those folks try to produce SUVs and sedans they do look uglier. The 4 door Porsche looks a weird elongated version, similar to what happens to regular cars that get converted into limousines.

However the Tesla model S is a regular sedan, 4 doors, a boot, space for child seats and it looks good. I still don't see how it was so complex for car manufacturers just to make beautiful or at least regular looking electric cars.

The Prius and the Leaf (it's weird elongated nose) are still just too plain ugly - just why do these companies do it. The BMW i3 is so unashamably ugly, when at the same time they managed to build the i8 which does look nice.

I think the value is seeing how a large company formally approaches brand. With an interactive brand guideline and formal rules. Vs many startups which base their designs (often) more on emotion than research and standardization.

Also... I love the way Audi's look :(

Edit: not changing my comment, that part is the same. Just commenting... I wonder if someone downvoted me because they hate the way Audi's look or because they disagree with my devil's advocate position on brand guides. :)

I feel somewhat dumber having read that.

For reference, it used to be chrome 3D rings. Now they're flat (and black?).

http://www.designtagebuch.de/wp-content/uploads/mediathek//2...

The new logo appears to be a shadow of its former self (quite literally)

For reference, it used to be 2D grey rings (~1960s): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/DK...

feeling a strong chanel vibe from the new logo.

Wow, I dislike the extremely wide font. It looks stretched like a 4:3 picture on a 16:9 screen.

Same. It looks equal parts CSS error and inexperienced site design. I like the flat rings logo a lot and there are lots of great ways to apply it, but the rest I find off-putting.

Yeah lol I was really thinking something is wrong with my browser!

How cute. A car maker trying to ride the flat design wave.

Forget microtuning your logo, now with 40% more unicorn sparkles, and just put the big focus in not lying to your users about the contamination caused by your overpriced products, lads.

Whew, I was glad to see they hadn't completely scrapped the iconic 4 rings.

Nice to see them making all their branding assets available like this though - right down to the icon sets etc. That would make third party apps or in car navigation systems etc. conform to the same look and feel.

On that note - I wonder how soon it will be before car manufacturers have 'app stores' for add ons to their internal systems. Wouldn't it be cool, for instance, to have a custom navigation app that you could install in your Tesla to supplement the factory installed one?

For example - this engineer's proof of concept for a touch screen interface in a car [0]. If he could brand it with the Audi graphic assets and pitch it to them, I am sure it will go a long way to them incorporating it in their future vehicles...

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVbuk3jizGM

>On that note - I wonder how soon it will be before car manufacturers have 'app stores' for add ons to their internal systems. Wouldn't it be cool, for instance, to have a custom navigation app that you could install in your Tesla to supplement the factory installed one?

That's what Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are going for, I think that is more future proof than tying the hardware to the car.

Well, it's certainly better logo update than what Cadillac did. They went from a nice crest with a wreath to a fat crest with too much chrome - http://puu.sh/vSH60/fe68dfbe32.jpg

- an opinion

Is this the first step of a new brand identity? One that actually stands for something instead of being a bland something?

The Brand New review on this new branding system: http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_glob...

what changed?

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds

  DIGITAL FIRST
  BREATH MORE FREELY
  NO LONGER A STATIC STRUCTURE
  LIVING INTERFACE THAT INTERACTS WITH HUMAN BEINGS

to be incomprehensible art wank.

Also, grey font on white background can't die soon enough.

I think they have made the logo rings flat, before they had 3d effect.

Somebody, out there, just made millions by drawing 4 circles in photoshop.

Give them some credit, it was probably Illustrator.

Audi's overall design is very good. But, it's not B R E A T H T A K I N G [0]

[0] https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell...

ps. I would be surprised if anyone can get through this document with a straight face.

Hilarious. I can't understand that you can make money with this.

That paper is fantastic.

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