The car logo is one of the most recognizable brand assets in the world. Over the years we’ve written extensively on them, including recent rebrandings. It’s fascinating to see the results from a study which aimed to determine how easily recognisable these designs are.
The participants were shown eight logos from major automobile brands. Each brand was represented by three different designs, including the original logo and two versions that have been slightly altered. They were asked to select the official logo. Our less scientific, but expertly recommended choice of the appeared to be backed up by the results. best car logos around.
Various studies have been conducted to test people’s ability to recall car logos, including a humorous project where people were asked to “remember the design of a car” draw car logos from memory. This latest survey is from UK car lease company Vanarama The test didn’t test the participants’ artistic abilities, but rather how many details they could remember from famous brand identities.
BMW and Mercedes Benz were the brands with the highest percentages of correct logos, with 50 and 40 percent of participants respectively. Nissan was last on the list with 24%. Ford, Honda, and Tesla were all very close behind with 32% to 34%.
The results confirms what many may already have concluded: BMW and Mercedes are better known brands than Honda or Nissan. However, the results seem to support the idea that simpler logos can be more easily remembered, especially since BMW and Mercedes are both simple, compared to Ford’s script logo. BMW and Mercedes are ranked first and second in our list of best car logos.
It’s difficult to ensure that the logos were of the same size. The study did not use the current BMW logo, which is simpler than the original design used for the project. This week, we’ve also added a new Ford logoAlthough the differences between the old and new designs are so subtle that no one noticed.
