Skoda Auto Unveils New Logo

Skoda Auto has presented the new corporate identity and unveiled new logo at the Geneva International Motor Show 2011. The new logo claims to reflect the Skoda's new design language and the start of a new era in the company's brand development. In brief, the new logo has kept the same lines, with the indian arrow in the middle, but without the Skoda Auto text. The icon is featured in green to emphasize Skoda's focus on ecology and environment.

Following on the footsteps of Nike and Apple, there is a certain trend lately in loosing all the clutter and even wording and building on a strong and memorable symbol. When trying to be unique and recognizable, the best thing to do is to attribute yourself not another word, but a strong image that you could transform into a powerful mark. We've seen this done recently with Starbucks Coffee (they have also got rid of the wording in the logo and kept only the siren as an identifiable icon) and Skoda Auto seems to be following on the same design and branding path.

Building on the tag line message, "simply clever", Skoda Auto updated its logo into a smart and powerful mark, with simplicity and friendliness as the key concepts. The indian arrow has been kept, updated and pushed forward as the main design element, and in my opinion, it is a symbol strong enough to support the image of Skoda Auto brand.

My only concern is, that with the new logo, Skoda Auto lost some of the elegance the previous mark had. By emphasizing the simplicity, the friendliness and the "Go Green" concept, the new logo has become less classy. The updated green color in the logo has become less powerful and it's somehow lost itself in the environmental sea. Only the time will tell.

It's always an interesting fact to look at a company's logo history and the Czech motor company had an amazing journey in this respect. With few exceptions, Skoda logos were always elegant at some extend, this being an argument to my comment above.