The Jaguar rebrand has been dreadfully misconceived. The fatal mistake? Throwing away their heritage, writes Eliot Wilson The Jaguar name first appeared on a car 89 years ago, the 100 model saloon produced by William Lyons’s SS Cars. The unfortunate resonance of those letters saw the company renamed Jaguar Cars in 1945, but it indicates the marque’s history, and it was in part the weight of that history which led to the unveiling last week of a new logo and branding.
The launch caught the attention of the media, but for the wrong reasons: the most common reactions have been derision and incredulity. The company’s new logo shows off its modernity with random capitalisation, styling itself “JaGUar” in what it calls its “signature”. The press release spares no pretension or self-regard, calling the logo “a powerful celebration of modernism – geometric form, symmetry and simplicity – demonstrating the unexpected by seamlessly blending upper and lowercase characters in visual harmony”.
There is also a redesigned (sorry, “newly reimagined”) version of the famous leaping cat icon, “a representation of excellence and hallmark of the brand”. In case this empty and overblown design verbiage was not enough, we are told solemnly that “Jaguar’s transformation is defined by Exuberant Modernism” and is guided by an “ethos to Copy Nothing”. This is a nod to the belief of William Lyons that a Jaguar should be “a copy of nothing”, though it is hard t.