A car logo has a harder job than most logos. It has to work as a few millimetres of print in a brochure and as a badge bolted to a grille, on a key fob and on a wheel centre, in chrome, in paint, in light and on a phone screen. It is also expected to last for decades. This guide explains how carmakers approach that job, what tends to change when a badge is redesigned, and what the history of real badges teaches about it.
Why a car logo is different
Most brand logos live on paper and screens. A car badge is also a physical object. It is cast, stamped, moulded or lit, it sits on curved surfaces, and it has to survive weather, car washes and many years of use. It also carries a lot of history. Many badges on this site are older than the cars they appear on, so every redesign has to respect what came before.
Where the ideas come from
When you look across more than a hundred car brands, the same few sources of inspiration come up again and again:
- The founder’s name or initials: from the Ford script to the DR initials of DR.
- A city or region: Alfa Romeo uses two symbols of Milan, and Porsche the horse of Stuttgart with the crest of Württemberg-Hohenzollern.
- The company’s first products: the Peugeot lion started on saw blades, and the Citroën chevrons come from a gear patent.
- A story or a person: the Ferrari horse came from the First World War pilot Francesco Baracca.
- A merger: the four Audi rings stand for the four companies that formed Auto Union in 1932.
How a badge is designed, step by step
Every carmaker works differently, and many projects involve outside agencies as well as in-house designers. Still, the work usually moves through the same stages.
- Research the brand: its history, its earlier badges, the markets it sells in and what it wants to say next.
- Sketch many directions: letters, symbols, shapes and combinations, before narrowing them down.
- Simplify: remove detail until the shape is still recognisable at a glance and at a distance.
- Test at every size and in every material: as a tiny icon, as a grille badge, in one colour, in reverse, in metal and in light.
- Protect it: register the design as a trademark in the countries where the brand will use it.
- Roll it out: on new models first, then dealerships, websites, documents and merchandise, often over several years.
Toyota’s oval emblem shows how long this can take. According to Toyota, the design arrived in October 1989, about five years after planning began, and appeared first on the Celsior luxury saloon.
What makes a car logo work
- A simple, strong shape: the best badges can be recognised from a silhouette alone.
- Works in one colour: a badge is often seen as plain chrome, black or white, so it cannot depend on colour.
- Scales well: fine lines and small text disappear when a logo is shrunk to an app icon.
- Carries meaning: a link to the brand’s story gives people something to remember and repeat.
- Ages slowly: designs that follow a passing trend tend to need replacing sooner.
The move to flat logos
For decades, badges were drawn to look like the chrome objects on the car, with shading and highlights. That changed as brands began to appear mostly on screens. Audi first used flat, two-dimensional rings in 2016, because three-dimensional rings did not work well on digital screens. MINI followed with a flat logo on its models from March 2018, Volkswagen showed its new flat design in September 2019, and in 2020 BMW introduced a flat roundel with a transparent version and Nissan replaced a logo it had used for about 20 years.
Others went further. Peugeot unveiled a lion’s head inside a shield in February 2021, Renault returned to an outline diamond in the same year, and General Motors showed a lowercase gm with an m that looks like a plug in January 2021. In November 2024 Jaguar introduced a completely new identity built around William Lyons’s line that a Jaguar should be “a copy of nothing”.
Flat does not always mean simpler on the car itself. Infiniti, for example, refined its logo in 2023 and announced a three-dimensional emblem that lights up for future models.
Evolution, not revolution
Most successful redesigns change the drawing and keep the idea. BMW has redrawn its roundel only a handful of times in more than a century, and the Peugeot lion has gone from a full figure to a lion inside a shield to just a head, while remaining a lion throughout. Complete breaks with the past, such as Jaguar’s 2024 identity, are rare and tend to attract strong reactions. For more examples, see our guide to classic car logos or browse every car brand from A to Z.
Frequently asked questions
Who designs car logos?
It varies. Some badges were drawn by the founders or their friends, some by artists and illustrators, and many modern ones by in-house design teams working with branding agencies. Each brand page on this site names the designer where a reliable source does.
Why did so many car brands make their logos flat?
Flat logos are easier to display on phones, websites and in-car screens, and several brands linked the change to their move towards electric cars.
How often do carmakers change their logos?
Not often. Most redraw their badge every few decades, and many keep the same basic symbol for a century or more.