It’s new logo week! First, Kia, now GM.
And we’re batting two for two on the perplexion scale.
All this follows Nissan’s recent logo change.
GM is making the change to showcase its new focus on electrification.
“There are moments in history when everything changes. Inflection points. We believe such a point is upon us for the mass adoption of electric vehicles,” Deborah Wahl, GM’s global chief marketing officer, said in a statement. “Unlike ever before, we have the solutions, capability and scale to put everyone in an EV. Our new brand identity and campaign are designed to reflect this.”
It’s all part of a campaign called “Everybody In” that will showcase GM’s electrification plans, including the Ultium battery.
“’Everybody In’ demonstrates our intent to lead, while inviting others — policymakers, partners, individuals — to play an active role in moving society forward, whether that’s helping to expand infrastructure, advocating for progress in their communities or simply taking an EV for a test drive to learn about the benefits of EV ownership,” Wahl said in the statement.
GM does have big electrification plans, despite having just one EV – the Chevrolet Bolt – currently on sale. We know about the Hummer, a planned “utility” version of the Bolt, and the upcoming Cadillac Lyriq. Rumor has it that GM will reveal more plans around electrification at CES this week.
As for the logo itself, it’s part of a marketing campaign that involves well-known names like author Malcolm Gladwell surfer/shark-attack survivor Bethany Hamilton.
The company’s Web site is set to be redesigned, with the new version launching Monday.
According to Automotive News, the logo is “vibrant blue” to show that the skies of the future will be clearer due to zero emissions. The font is now lowercase, and the edges are rounded off. The “m” remains underlined to represent an electrical plug.
GM considers this logo less severe, more human, and more approachable than the current one.
We just think it doesn’t look as good.
[Image: GM]
Gradient blend? Logo fail 101 right there. My college graphic design professor likely has a knife pressed against his wrist right now. This is BAD, like early 2000s web-design bad. Why didn’t they go full throttle and put a drop shadow behind it too?
“How splendid his Majesty looks in his
new clothes, and how well they fit!” everyone
cried out. “What a design! What colors!”
For sure… as a designer I’ve been in plenty of those meetings. I worked for a company that was headed towards bankruptcy and part of its last gasp was a massive re-branding (logo, TV and radio spots, etc). My teams design was rejected and the expensive (yet terrible) fancy pants NY ad agency designs were praised. Clearly the fix was in – I honestly believe it was a money laundering attempt to relocate the company’s cash before all of our assets were frozen. The financial company handling our bankruptcy was (drum roll…) a significant investor of said ad agency. They got paid as our company tanked. Funny how that worked out.
JMII … Wow, I will have to file that tactic away for future reference (only for defensive purposes, of course).
ex-freaking-actly.
Wow ! Hope they didn’t pay a lot for that logo ! ( based on my decades of business world experience it’s very likely they did ! )
Results like this are proof there are people in GM management with ill-defined responsibilities, limited skills, and too much time on their hands. I’m not even talking about the jobbers (art department? junior exec?) who did the design, but the execs who thought (or were persuaded) that the logo needed an update.
Wow. I am a retiree and this logo looks like it belongs on a restroom door.
Agreed.
Lower case letters and the overall look do not convey strength. This logo makes General Motors look weak.
Would any of you want this logo festooned on the new Corvette?
Well electric greenie-mobiles don’t convey strength or power either. So it seems pretty fitting.
If reducing carbon conversion was a “strength”, then a Nissan Leaf would “convey” more strength and power than a Raptor or a TRX.
They could have at least made the M look like a three-pronged plug.
Cadillac doesn’t know what its logo should be, and its parent company has the same problem.
Cadillac DOES know what’s logo should be – it’s dealers have told them to put the old crest back on. I’d wager a Canadian quarter I just got in change that at least one dealer asked, “Does Mercedes mess with their three-point star?”
Mercedes is run by zee Germans, Cadillac is run by children.
Guess you never hit the “gas” in a Tesla…
The new logo is dreadful. If it came on my Vette I’d remove it, just like I removed the stingray fish on the front fenders….
As goes GM, so goes the country!
What a disgusting thought. OTOH there’s a similar level of competence in Washington as there is in the “Silver Silos”.
Well, go on Youtube and look at all the Tesla S’s embarassing, well, everything.
I like it.
At least the ad tells you something about the EV ownership experience, unlike most ads for other cars.
I like the blue fade over the solid color. But eGM would be better.
“we have the solutions, capability and scale to put everyone in an EV.”
“We know about the Hummer, a planned ‘utility’ version of the Bolt, and the upcoming Cadillac Lyriq.”
Not so sure I believe Ms.Wahl.
gm has been mismanaging their plug-in product strategy for a while now. Letting Ford introduce the F150EV while gm focuses on dorkmobiles & boutique stuff is going to prove a massive mistake.
Hmmm, from capitals to lower case, that speaks volumes without as much as uttering a single word.
And no more “Mark Of Excellence!”
Well that hasn’t existed since the ‘80s at least!
Vega, Cimarron, and X-Cars excluded from “excellence!” G-bodies good, the rest a mixed bag by the mid-‘80s!
Looks like a logo on a tube of toothpaste from the 90s.
GM electrifies your smile eliminating the heart break of “Range Anxiety”
Ford better catch up. (Ha!)
Haven’t you seen the new Ford logo?
“Explorer_Bronco_Mustang_F-150_Escape… and a bunch of Lincolns”
Its initials are: B E F E M… and a bunch of Lincolns.
Sorry to keep whipping the same tired old horse, but there’s an evidentiary coincidence going on here.
Oops, I forgot Expedition, so BEEF-em… and a bunch of Lincolns. Much better :)
“Ford better catch up”
@ToolGuy…. Ford could change their name to “F Series” and no one would notice.
Great idea, GM. Demolish the greatest thing you have going for you: your rich history. Change one of the most recognizable logos in America.
This effort to become hip and trendy will fail like a Jimmy Swaggart attempt to become a gangsta rapper.
GM has more baggage than relevant history, at least to the masses. I realize GM was bankrupt roughly around the same time as Fisker, but if through a shell company they could have acquired the rights to the marque and sold the Volt as the Fisker Volt it would have been much more successful.
O_o
For once, I’m speechless!
Must be from trying to suppress the urge to vomit.
You win the Internet!
classic GM. this is where they put time and energy, one of the few things that dont need to be changed.
Burger King just re-did their logo also.
BK should focus on the quality of their product instead, just as GM ought to be doing.
I’m guessing the GMC logo is next. Any guesses as to what THAT will be?
(Don’t be surprised if it’s lower case, cursive and in Mary Barra lipstick pink.)
Oddly they went retro there! That’s straight out of the 1970s!
What about the Guy Fawkes character with the crown?
This is the most GM thing GM could have done…basically throwing away brand recognition and heritage. This looks like the logo of a failed or failing Tec startup….
It’s fine but if GM is really going to project an aura of hip now-ness it needs some lens flare.
I’m still not going to buy your cars.
“As for the logo itself, it’s part of a marketing campaign that involves well-known names like author Malcolm Gladwell surfer/shark-attack survivor Bethany Hamilton.”
Sorry, but even a one-armed surfer chick isn’t going to get me into a Chevy Sonic.
I confess I did not carefully read the original post. Is this a joke? Am checking my calendar for April 1….nope.
I suppose the old logo was not really all that special but at least it was recognizable.
That ain’t gonna look good on top of the RenCen, that’s for sure!
It sure won’t and there are going to piles of old clothes in front of the building too.
Funny thing is that gradients and glossy coatings are seriously out of vogue right now, while flat solid colors with clear edges are in. GM retired their old logo just when it started to become modern again. Take the old logo, make the blue a bit lighter and the font a bit chunkier, and boom! modern logo.
If you are wondering why this shift is happening, it’s simple: in the past, gradients were used in UIs in order to show off you have a 24-bit display. Semi-transparency and dynamic gloss to show off you have a real GPU. But now everyone has one of those, even on their phones. So, now we have flat UIs with crisp edges to show off you have a high-DPI (aka “retina”) device. Logos naturally follow UI trends.
+1
Just look at Apple’s iOS interface changes over the years. This new GM logo is heading the opposite direction.
iOS 14 actually isn’t too bad. It just works, and unlike iOS 13, they genuinely made improvements.
While I’m not a fan of the current flat, monochromatic design trend, I agree with you, that would have worked for GM. This is…not great.
Looks like the Goodwill logo, think we can buy old clothes from GM now?
Came in here to say “Looks like they added a lower-case m to the Goodwill logo.” You beat me to it!
Goodwill is currently engaged in a hostile takeover of GM LLC.
GM … er…excuse me, gm, needs all the goodwill they can get at this point.
GM dealers better not put this logo on their buildings if they don’t want people leaving old clothes on the lawn.
Looks like some sort of power up from Mario Bros./Party/Kart
Looks like something you’d see on knockoff earbuds and charger cords by the register at 7-Eleven.
Oh, GM.
I can’t stand the underline underneath the cute little “m.” Is this so they can prove which way is UP? Are they planning on having lots of their vehicles found in ditches upside down, and this is the way to KNOW they’re upside down??
Or maybe this is their version of the Jeep Wrangler tire cover, “if you can read this, help me flip it over.”
The lack of capital letters is a appropriate since GM is no longer a global or domestic leader in the manufacture of vehicles.
My family fleet contained at least one GM vehicle from April 1992 to December 2019. Now it’s a Mazda, a Hyundai, a Toyota, and three Hondas. At least the Hyundai, the Toyota, and a Honda were made in America, using mostly American-supplied parts.
Makes me sad. But I have to buy the best vehicles I can for the money I have to spend.
The Mark of Excellence.
The underlined “m” is really an E and an I – you know, for “everybody in.”
Every time I visit an LKQ wrecking yard I grab as many of the classic GM emblems that were placed on the sides of their cars and trucks from 2004 to 2009. My 2002 Cadillac Eldorado ETC gets two emblems next. My four Toronados will be updated also.
Did the RenCen get sucked into Tron and I missed it?
Close encounter with Transformers!
The new logo is meh (though I like the animation), and they can always revert to the traditional Mark of Excellence in a few years with much fanfare if they want.
I was actually impressed with the EV spot. It’s a decent first attempt at spinning the message to the masses that EVs are the next hot thing. They should retain the girl who says “The electric future starts now” for future spots, like the Nissan “Dogs love trucks” guy. Her taglines can evolve like “The electric future continues”, “The electric future goes off-road too” etc. etc.
You can have those ideas for free, Mary. :-)
“We had to do it… after years of declining market share and lousy sales in 2020, General Motors simply has no more capital(s)!”
gm? The first phrase that comes to mind is “girlie man.”
The tens of millions of dollars the new logo will ultimately cost to introduce system-wide would be far better spent improving GM vehicles’ quality of design and execution. The dollar per car GM saved by ignoring the defective ignition switch linked to the deaths of at least 13 people comes to mind.
The line below the “m” seems like a slight callback to the old GM “Mark of Excellence” seen on many a seatbelt.
https://www.amazon.com/Buckle-Down-Seatbelt-Belt-Black-Regular/dp/B005IPB90M
With it only covering one letter now, does that mean GM is only half as excellent as it used to be? *shrug* If the shoe fits…
I’ve been a graphic designer for 25 years. This logo is freaking terrible. Worthy of public outcry.
How odd.
So after Generation Z comes Generation E? Good to know, I was wondering since we run out of letters for generations. But I still do not understand what that underscore symbolizes? Men? Underscoring men? Then how about women and other 100s shades of gender then?
Bwahahahaha!
I see that and I think, Oh they must make electric cars
I look at it and think, oh, they sell old clothes.
Allegedly, according to another site I read, the negative space in the M is supposed to look like a plug. Somebody else said the entire thing looked like a derpy elephant.
Surprising fact #1:
“The new logo was created by GM’s own designers. Even the font was created in-house, the company said.”
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/08/cars/new-gm-logo/index.html
Some harsh feedback from the home team at the Detroit Free Press:
https://tinyurl.com/y3urbckt
Theory (grasping here): GM is pulling a Coke Classic and will unveil the ‘real’ logo after a public outcry where the citizenry proclaims its undying devotion to the company and its products.
[Example cover story if GM changes its mind…]
https://tinyurl.com/y2km4l4r
I like the gist of the responses that the Freep cited: must be a bunch of 5 year-olds to fifth-graders working for GM’s PR department!
Instead of gm, how ‘bout “china?”
I want to be critical of it, but I’m reminded of the many times when Mercedes, Audi, Porsche, and Ferrari completely changed their logos to make their cars more desirable…. Oh…wait… Nevermind. Carry on, you’ve got this.
Welcome to the little gm auto auction and thank you for your charitable contributions that keep the competently challenged management employed. The new corporate logo represents the new new gm and we are requesting another loan from you the taxpayers. Thank you for your continued financial support.
The new logo resembles a (stylized) elephant standing at the edge of a platform; the once great giant shambling off into irrelevance, perhaps?
Did they just ask Linux Mint to give them a hand? Unlike Kia, this is a failure and really not needed at all.
And I thought the new VW logo was cringeworthy! That’s tame compared to this!
Not to mention that one of the Freep articles mentioned that the logo has been around since 1964!!! 55 years, FFS!
About halfway down this page it shows all “5” of the logos through history:
https://tinyurl.com/y3omoym4
The ‘second’ one is still my favorite by far. When I joined GM in 1990 (at the old headquarters building*; link below) I ran across a ‘style guide’ (which was often violated) for the proper use of the logo. They created an entire typeface [modified Helvetica] in-house as part of the development process.
(In my high-school years I did some typesetting at a graphic arts company and learned enough about fonts, serifs, kerning, points and picas to be mildly dangerous.)
*I also went down to the archives and checked out some of the very earliest journal entries from the car divisions, because I’m a geek like that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Place
GM now means Gender Male. Male or Man, I can only guess. How about replacing GM with GW and putting bar on top of W. In other words to turn m-underscore up down. Now it will mean Gender Woman or female, since CEO considers itself to be a woman (but I may be wrong). Cables in EVs usually have male and female connectors. Why emphasize male connector in logo? It reeks discrimination against women and other genders.
What are you smoking??
What are you smoking??
I don’t smoke. California is non-smoking state. But when I smoked I preferred Camel.
I’m not an artist, and even I can see a poor effort….but GM has taught me not to buy their products, so there’s that.
Same.
This is wimpy and to me stinks of market research garbage.
Same with FCAs logo.
Or how you come up with the stupid name Stellantis.
Stellantis is a good name for the newly merged FCA since buyers of their products need to take drugs to cope with owning a Stellantis vehicle.
An Elephant’s sex organ is its Foot ! When it steps on you – you are @#$%ed !
As our country falls so does GM and the start of Malaise era II. This is just another piece of evidence of that!
I’ve been saying that the first Mailaise Era started with conditions like now. The end will be amorphous pods, with car ownership lost to the dustbin of history.
The new logo fades from light blue to darker blue and displays the GM letters in lowercase type, is intended to evoke “the clean skies of a zero-emissions future and the energy of the Ultium [battery] platform,” GM said