“Jaguar has its roots in originality. Sir William Lyons, our founder, believed that a Jaguar should be a copy of nothing,” says the British car brand’s CCO Gerry McGovern. “Our vision for Jaguar today is informed by this philosophy.”
Guided by the ‘Copy Nothing’ ethos, the brand’s new identity promises to be ‘unique’ and ‘fearless’, which in fairness, as far as its competitors go, it has managed to achieve. However, it seems to have gone so far off piste as far as luxury car branding is concerned that it has accidentally wandered into the visual language of a 2010s high street clothing brand instead.
At the centre of the new branding, which was created by the in-house design team at Jaguar Land Rover, is a wordmark that does away with Jaguar’s previous squat, technical letterforms and replaces them with a new mixed-case version that’s all smooth, rounded edges.
This isn’t strictly offensive in and of itself. However, the lifestyle imagery it has chosen to launch the identity with has done it no favours. Paired with oddly cult-like photos of models in colour block clothing, and language that’s wafty even by car brands’ standards (‘delete ordinary’, ‘create exuberance’), it feels painfully muddled.
The identity is said to be underpinned by ‘exuberant modernism’, however any links with modernist graphic design or typography seem to be in name only. Yes, the wordmark’s form may be simple – but what is the all-important function?
Elsewhere the Jaguar logo has been flipped 180 degrees to face right and appear as part of what the brand calls a ‘strikethrough’ graphic, which essentially means stripes surrounding the jaguar. The identity also includes a monogram comprising two ‘J’ letterforms that blend into the roundel.
The new identity was revealed during a briefing that appears to have been just as mystifying as the end product. How – or indeed whether – it will appear on the cars themselves remains to be seen.
A new ‘design vision concept’ will be revealed during Miami Art Week at the beginning of December, though this seems unlikely to shed light on how the designs will be integrated into car models and instead is linked to an art installation. In the meantime, perhaps we would be wise to do as the brand says and Copy Nothing.
jaguar.com/copy-nothing
