Adele Smith
Skoda, Czech manufacturer of practical and affordable vehicles, has a new logo. It comes as a continuation of the brand’s new design language launched with the Vision 7S concept and is said to be the biggest change in Skoda’s identity in the last 30 years.
The trigger for this change is the automaker’s Strategy 2030, which focuses on electrification and digitization. The new brand logo and brand identity adapts to these two trends with a new logo that is simpler in two-dimensional graphics. This, says Skoda, makes it more recognizable on displays and printed products compared to existing three-dimensional designs.
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Instead of the previous Skoda emblem, new vehicles from the brand will now feature the word Skoda written on the trunk lid. This typographic logo will appear not only on the back of the car from the company, as it has in recent years, but also on the front. To make the logo more expressive, Skoda gave the letter S an integrated hook accent.
“Those accents are a challenge for us: from a global perspective, they tend to be confusing for most of our customers. In the new form, this symbol will be integrated and blend into the symmetry of the logo, while customers in the domestic market and some others will still recognize it in letters,” Martin Pavlík, a member of the Skoda marketing team working on the new brand identity, explains the strategy.
But what about the legendary winged arrow? It remains but in a slightly modified form. The logo has been simplified with a two-dimensional design and will appear flat from now on. However, the shape, size, and basic meaning of the logo have not changed.
A small group of Skoda employees worked on the brand’s new logo and identity. However, the team had company-wide support who received a total of 165 design proposals when the process began. The proposals were selected into only three options, which were tested by involving 2,200 respondents from the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Norway, and other countries.
The new logo will first appear on communication materials and social media. Starting in 2024, it will also start appearing on new Skoda models.
