Volkswagen will present a new brand design and new logo at IAA. The presentation of the brand is to become ‘significantly younger, more digital and generally more modern’.
The brand relaunch coincides with the launch of the all-electric ID.3, which VW maintains ‘will usher in a new era for Volkswagen’. The relaunch also addresses the need for an update that works better with digital media and will also include a ‘sound logo’.
“New Volkswagen” will become visible and perceptible in the design of the vehicles, in customer contacts and in the corporate presentation as a whole. The objective is to ‘create a new 360° customer experience that is modern and fascinating throughout the world and across all channels’.
Volkswagen’s Chief Designer Klaus Bischoff, who played a key role in the development of the new CI, said:
“The new brand design reflects a type of mobility that forms a natural part of people’s lives. Volkswagen has always been a key element in these efforts. In the new age of mobility, the motto is ‘digital first’, without any filters.”
The new logo will be more modern, clearer and simpler. The logo will be ‘reduced to its essential elements and presented with a new design that is flat and two-dimensional’. It will allow more flexible use and will be ‘outstandingly recognisable in digital media’. This, VW claims, also applies to the new brand signals such as pictograms, typography, colors or layouts.
The international roll-out of the new brand design will begin at the IAA Frankfurt International Motor Show in September. The starting signal will be given by the unveiling of the new logo on the high-rise building at company headquarters in Wolfsburg. The changeover is to be implemented in several waves using a cost-optimized, resource-conserving approach. Initially, the brand’s locations and dealers in Europe will be changed over, followed by China in October. The changeover will then be implemented step-by-step in North and South America as well as the rest of the world from the beginning of 2020. All in all, 171 markets will be affected. At the more than 10,000 facilities of dealers and service partners throughout the world, about 70,000 logos will be replaced. Volkswagen’s rebranding will therefore be one of the largest operations of this type in the industry world-wide.
