Lamborghini is updating its brand identity – Design Diary

Lamborghini, the Italian manufacturer of sports cars, introduces itself with a new brand identity. As part of the visual update, the brand is also being revised.

The Lamborghini car manufacturer was founded in 1963 by Ferruccio Lamborghini in Sant’Agata Bolognese (Emilia-Romagna). Lamborghini has been a Volkswagen Group company since 1998. Along with Audi, Bentley and Ducati, Lamborghini is part of the “Progressive” brand group within the VW Group. Stephan Winkelmann has been the CEO of Lamborghini since 2020; Winkelmann already held this position between 2005 and 2016. Lamborghini currently employs around 2,300 people.

In 2023, Lamborghini delivered a total of 10,014 cars through 184 dealers in 54 countries – more than ever before in one year (for comparison: Volkswagen produces around 40,000 cars a day in 70 plants worldwide). According to the plan presented in 2021, which expects the electrification of the entire range of products, the structures should It has been beaten, Russia, Hurricane will be offered as hybrid cars by the end of 2024. At the beginning of 2024, related goals were set out in the “Direzione Cor Tauri” strategy paper: Lamborghini wants to reduce production by 40% per vehicle by 2030. Lamborghini has now announced that it will also renew the identity of brand it as part of a complete transformation process.

Excerpt from press release

In times of rapid and constant change, Automobili Lamborghini is preparing for the future with a redesigned logo that embodies innovation and determination. The further development of the company’s vision fits perfectly into the overall approach to change, “Direzione Cor Tauri”, which defines the company’s new course focused on sustainability and carbon destruction. This sustainable approach heralds a new phase in the company’s position.

More than 20 years after the last update, Automobili Lamborghini is updating its logo again. The brand logo has been changed to a simplified representation (flat design) – color gradients and glowing effects will be released in the future. Depending on the context of the application, the logo can be displayed in white, black or gold tones.

The arms were also placed inside the cowl, which has always been a visual symbol of the Lamborghini sports car brand. The animal’s characteristic posture, bent to attack, remains – but the image has been transformed into a seamless contour pattern. The lines of the bull have been subtly modified: the horns in particular now stand out more clearly from their surroundings. Strange for the Lamborghini brand: from now on the bull appears in the context of the use of digital media, isolated from the shape of another rotating shield. In this way, the animal should come even more forward.

In addition to the redesigned trademark and a more developed color concept with black as the base color and white and gold as the accent color, the changed livery also includes a house font called “Lambo” created specifically for Lamborghini. The new corporate font “undoubtedly takes on the edges and lines of the cars and is very similar to the design language of the car manufacturer from Sant’Agata Bolognese,” according to the company.

Comments

Let’s take the bull by the horns. It’s not perfect in form, it never was, as the change in the Lamborghini brand logo shows. The previous versions of the logo, as well as the logo presented now, have several surprising details and features. Information that lacks technical accuracy. It’s surprising for a brand that claims qualities like quality, performance and superior design quality.

In the course of the change from the representation with colors/color curves to the positive-negative contour, the shape of the bull becomes a shape and a gold nugget that previously did not matter, like a nugget becomes a high contrast. Some details, such as the surface area, are just now coming to the fore. The face area now has a continuous connecting line between the eye and the nose. But in the end, this photoplay of light/positive and shadow/negative does not seem convincing – it is well defined. The lines of the cowl mark do not reflect the typical angular shape of Lamborghini models.

The WWF logo, for example, has the highest positive-negative contour: the play of shapes shown in the panda image of black faces and open white spaces, which are only completed conceptually in general by our eyes, is excellent. Form and quality of design that Lambo Taurus cannot match. As a viewer, what bothers me even more than the silhouette of the bull is the fact that the animal is not placed in the center of the shield. Lambo’s bull is unbalanced – it threatens, so to speak, from the shield to the right. Which is also because the cow has become wider around the hips. The free space on the left side of the animal is now larger than before. The shiny gold color has so far partially obscured this imbalance. It’s about all the uneven spaces between that make the overall design look not fully thought out and drawn.

Regardless, the very act of sharpening your profile as a brand is the right one. In any case, the measurement is more understandable than the last change of markings on Peugeot. A comparison with the related Lamborghini logo makes it clear what idea Peugeot had in mind.

Thoughts on the subject of electricity. “Plug-in hybrid” and “Lamborghini” – in this combination a very unusual, unexpected pair of words from the point of view of the originality of the Lamborghini brand. Perhaps this is why the company itself calls the model that it introduced last year It has been beaten like “HPEV”, which stands for “High Performance Electric Vehicle” and sounds faster. An interesting fact about this “HPEV”: according to the appropriate driving reports, the range, if driven purely on electricity, is between 10 and 13 km. This is not a typo. So it is understandable if the manufacturer prefers to emphasize the value of 1015 hp in the technical data instead of mentioning the range of 13 km.

I can’t and don’t want to judge whether the switch to hybrid storage technology is more than a fig leaf, a switch method or a PR measure. What is surprising: unlike Lamborghini, Porsche, Jaguar, Maserati, among others, they participate in the electric racing series “FIA Formula E” – there they are and they look like a racing brand -> Photo. Many see electronic racing series as the market of the future. The market and image provider that Lamborghini seems to also want to develop more or use itself? Economist Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, on the other hand, sees the electrification of cars as a bad approach. The automotive expert considers hydrogen and e-fuels to be the most sustainable technology. As a car manufacturer, it is a challenge for everything to make brand communication in this area of ​​tension and to align itself visually to match the strategic direction.

A sentence about the words: Lamborghini itself speaks in the press release of the revision of the “corporate image” and at the same time of the renewal of the “visual identity of the brand”. The language is a mess. Unlike Volkswagen, for example, Lamborghini clearly does not distinguish between a brand (B2C) and a company (B2B) – so in this specific case, the term “company presence” should be understood as the same as “brand presence”.

Last but not least, the timing of the release seems haphazard and uncoordinated. Just ten days ago, Lamborghini opened a showroom for the first time in São Paulo (Brazil), still in the old identity of the brand. Which shows that the redesign of the trademark was not planned long in advance.

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