Vauxhall Logo Design Review

T H O U G H T S

Animal symbols for car logos are a dime-a-dozen, especially in the European market. Vauxhall, a UK motors company gets shuffled in with the bunch. Nothing captivating here. Perhaps it's the fact that we are so inundated with lion, eagle, and horse designs, that one more just doesn't cut it. It doesn't provoke those feelings of imagination or sophistication like it could if maybe this was a first of it's kind. (Though, I will say there are some really nice auto industry marks out there that are complex, and I realize part of their depth of detail and illustration is to indicate a status symbol.) Reduced to black and white, it loses any real refinement it might have had in the full color, beveled, shiny mark. Those bevels helped create some added definition, but when removed, the large fields of open space in the body and arching wing that wraps around the right side feel unfinished. I like the little "V" in the flag and some of the subtle carved details in the "feathers" of the bird on it's left side, but it is unbalanced when compared to the right because of that side's lack of detail. The "V" also helps to bridge that gap of recognizing the mark in black and white. So that was a nice element added by the designer as a tool for a little more distinction and visual interest. The auto industry is funny because they can render really high quality, complex outputs of these logos as metal emblems for the cars, but at the same time, that ability to produce complex forms only lends itself to neglecting the idea of simplicity and how effective it can be…flashiness starts to replace form.

www.vauxhall.co.uk

R A T I N G S  (black and white version)

Scale: Bad, Fair, Good Rating black and white version, not rating the full color or grayscale versions.

- Recognizable: Fair

- Scalable: Fair

- Use of Pos/Neg: Fair

- Form: Fair

- Craftsmanship: Fair

- Functional: Fair