| Re: General Motors new logo
I think people have hit the nail on the head when they instinctively point out that the new logo appears like it could be from an app. Because that's precisely the thinking behind these rebrands. Now bear with me on this one.
As part of the electrification push, I'm sure it hasn't escaped anyone's notice how car companies have started to steadily blur the lines with the tech sector. You see that in the increasing focus they put on their marketing for their in house software features for example. Or if we look at trade fairs, in the last few years we've increasingly seen more auto makers becoming regulars at major technology fairs like CES. A decade ago this would've been totally bizarre. I think it's also the auto OEMs chasing where the trend is in terms of the stock market. Look at the ludicrous valuation of Tesla. In principle its an auto OEM, not a tech firm, yet it's valued at the lofty heights of the latter, far eclipsing the market caps of traditional auto OEMs. Is it that much of a surprise that these OEMs and their boards are being driven by the shareholders to chase the money?
Furthermore, a lot of this is almost herd mentality. Car makers now as a whole are so massive and homogenised across groups, that its rare you see them ploughing their own brave furrow (that only really works at a small scale, not the enormous global levels of the few real majors left). As a result, you have almost this pressure to not be seen to be caught napping. You end up with a domino effect, once one of the firms starts with a jazzy major rebranding exercise, the board members and major shareholders of the other firms stick their necks out, see how said rebranding at rival is being received and then push their own firm for why they aren't doing something similar! And thus you have this snowballing into an industry wide trend. It's part of the reason why the industry as a whole all seem to be making variations on the same broad brush stroke ideas. Take Crossovers. That's all OEMs really have in terms of their future product pipelines, no one is really out there taking a punt and coming up with something like the Renault Scenic (Chris Harris has made this gripe probably more eloquently and detailed than I have), or something like a Fiat Multipla, really creative ideas (bonkers though they may be). I guess the margins are so thin and the market is so ruthless, no one is willing to stick their neck out, so you have an industry of followers really.
To end, I imagine that the reason a lot of these rebranding and logo exercises look so similar is because its probably the same few consultancies or thought leaders being hired each time. Take the much touted company wide codified design philosophies of your FANG companies, Microsoft with their Fluent design, Google with their Material design and Apple famously moving away from skeumorphism a few years ago. These were all major news stories going beyond the realms of say design schools. A much broader segment of society was now aware of the thinking to some extent that goes behind the choice of font that these companies make. Personally all of this makes sense for these tech firms because you interact with their text design etc far more than for automakers, which is why the extent of automakers tinkering in this manner is limited to their logos at most, thus sufficing as lip service really.
Anyway, I've rambled enough, hopefully you get what I'm after here. | 
12th January 2021, 16:38
(2)
Thanks
