VW Logo, Love it or Hate it

VW’s answer? It has scrapped its shiny logo for a new flat design, which, according to its chief designer Klaus Bischoff is makes the W “float”, in a bid to give the logo a new lightness. Designed in-house it aims to be “clearer” across digital applications and better represent electric vehicles. The brand has also had a sex change replacing the male voiceover, in use for decades, with a woman’s ‘ warm, pleasant and confident voice’ says the company The company calls the rebrand the “New Volkswagen” saying ‘the pared-back redesign has a “high flexibility” across physical and digital platforms’. The CMO Jochen Sengpiehl says: “We want to become more human and move lively, to adopt the customer’s perspective to a greater extent and to tell authentic stories.”

What do I think? I like to look behind the obvious dynamics of a logo to the spirit that rests there and I sense shakiness. Maybe that is because, for the first time in the evolution of the logo, through at least 9 variations, the two lower points of the W do not rest on the outer circle. Maybe that makes it appear shaky. I do know I would not be happy wearing a VW tattoo with all the shattered values being delivered to me via my skin.