It’s been a buzzy week in automotive news, thanks mostly to the splash Jaguar has made with the release of its new brand marks and accompanying ad. Industry opinion seemed to break down into two camps: those who suggest we wait and see, and those who hate it. Though mine is one voice among thousands, as an experienced graphic designer, creative director and brand manager I can’t resist putting my two cents in. In today’s Market Monday I’ll provide my perspective on Jaguar’s new brand reveal and EV tease.

While I’ve never owned a British car, I have a deep affinity for them. Jaguar is just one British brand that I’ve always admired, primarily for its past successes in racing and elegant design language. After its heyday in the 1950s and 60s, decades of fluctuating success ensued until Ford purchased Jaguar in 1989. FoMoCo acquired the brand at a high point in an effort to broaden its portfolio to compete with BMW and Mercedes-Benz in Europe and other countries. While there were some wins, such as the XK8, Jaguar never made a profit while owned by Ford.

After the Great Recession of 2008, Ford was on the verge of bankruptcy, like the entire American auto industry. As a result, they sold Jaguar/Land Rover to the Indian company Tata Group. Under their stewardship, Land Rover has experienced a resurgence in brand health and popularity, while Jaguar has continued to struggle with platform derivatives of Land Rover in its product line and less investment in marketing and product development relative to its sister brand.

For the brand to survive, Jaguar had to change. It would seem as though the environmentally-mandated shift to EVs along with Tesla’s success presented the opportunity for a big shift to an all-electric Jaguar product line. An EV designed to replace the XJ was under development, but is said to have been axed in 2020 by incoming CEO Thierry Bolloré. Prior to the launch of the brand campaign, Jaguar stated it would pare down to selling a single petrol model after 2024, the F-Pace, to make way for an EV-dominant vehicle lineup after 2025. The first car to be built will be a large 4-door luxury sedan.

On November 18, Jaguar posted a press release heralding a new era for the company. To support its transition to a luxury EV manufacturer, the company has developed a new brand identity comprising four key elements. Jaguar’s new brand reveal lays the groundwork for the new vehicle design to be unveiled in just a week’s time from this writing. While the video advertising has dominated the conversation, there’s a lot to dig into.

When reviewing the creative, one should ground that feedback in the brand’s intentions. A new ethos, Copy Nothing, is inspired by words once uttered by Jaguar co-founder Sir William Lyons. The new creative language stems from a philosophy called Exuberant Modernism, embracing bold design, unexpected and original thinking, and fearless creativity to connect with buyers of ultra-luxury brands like Rolls Royce and Bentley. With that, let’s take a look at what we’ve got here.

The wordmark is the orientation and style of letters that will identify the brand on all of its products. A dramatically simplified and symmetrical treatment of the dated prior mark, this new treatment utilizes uppercase and lowercase letters to create an identity that is undoubtedly clean and simple.

As with many of these EV-driven redesigns of brand marks, I have qualms: It’s generic and lifeless. For an exuberant brand, it lacks any semblance of soul or personality inspired by the brand’s nearly 100 year heritage nor does it suggest an exciting new narrative. Tracked out letters and cap-height/x-height aligned marks are so commonplace now that this mark that doesn’t differentiate itself in any way at all. Aligning all the letters to the x-height hurts also hurts legibility, something important when the car bearing this mark silently whooshes past you. One thing I am intrigued by is the texture used and what that means for materials use elsewhere.

While automotive enthusiasts might not be the target market, they do make up a huge swath of the content creation community, and they don’t need more evidence that EVs are soulless appliances.

Two images highlight this new graphic element of bold horizontal lines: a series of embossed stripes parallel the device mark in the image above. In the other image below, the strikethrough provides a background for a redesigned leaper. Horizontal lines don’t strike me as luxurious, but executed as precise piercings, engravings, elegant embossings or grilles in a unique material, it could exude artistry.

A simplification of the logo is de rigueur for EV rebrands these days, though this design hits me as trendy rather than an everlasting evolution of the mark. Luxury is timeless, not trendy, so this simplified leaper feels like it could be a miss. Using the leaper exclusively as a knockout in another brand element does a disservice to that iconic symbol, in my view. That said, I am very on board with a change in direction of the leap. When the leaper was a hood ornament, orientation wasn’t a concern, but when flattened and fixed on the trunk or steering wheel, leaping leftward always felt regressive to me. Maybe it’s just a peculiarity to the West, where we read left to right.

I am curious why the leaper needs to even be a mark at all. The wordmark and “roaring cat” logo are entirely sufficient and more suited to carry emblem duties on the car. In the spirit of ultra luxury, I might have gone back to using the leaper in its original form as a hood emblem, as Rolls-Royce does with its (retractable) Spirit of Ecstasy.

The design team suggests the purpose of this new mark, christened a Monogram, is to signify a finished work. It’s clearly inspired by an artist’s mark, such as the monogram used by Albrecht Dürer or a ceramicist’s symbol, reinforcing the brand’s intended connection to art and artistry. This is a common technique, as luxury is the ultimate artistic and creative expression of retail. I could see any number of interesting automotive uses, such as the now-popular technique of embossing interior panels, upholstery or the black windshield surround with this mark.

My issue with this symbol is that it’s just as lifeless and soulless as the wordmark due to its generic appearance. It relies too much on visual cleverness (the reflective ‘j’ and ‘r’) to impress the viewer rather than communicating anything of value. Fortunately, this doesn’t seem to be a primary mark (or at least I hope to God this never shows up on the front of a car hiding the cruise control radar).

Jaguar’s new brand reveal not doing something, anything with the iconic “roaring cat” emblem is mystifying and its absence here is keenly felt by this writer.

Copy Nothing in itself is a noble notion (one I share), and is at least rooted in the history of the brand, having been inspired by a quote from the co-founder of Jaguar, Sir William Lyons. I love a tagline that has staying power, as I think this does, and can also serve as a rallying cry to the brand’s employees.

That said, this is potentially a very difficult mantra to live up to, especially in a world where it feels as though we’ve seen it all. It’s a bold statement that can only be proved through action, and it will be interesting to see how much the design team for the vehicle have taken this concept to heart in their design of Jaguar’s new concept. The brand creative so far doesn’t seem to live up to this ideal.

Jaguar, being British, may be associated most with British Racing Green. It’s a gentlemanly and refined color, and Jaguar’s wordmark from 1982-2001 even included green. With this new launch comes a brand palette that’s leaning into primary colors. Blue, Red and Yellow will apparently be paired “always” with texture or movement, and that will be interesting to see in practice in different media. Bold colors have certainly been present in Jaguar’s paint choices from the past, so there is some precedent for this and it has an added benefit of being differentiated among the brand’s competitors in the ultra-luxury market. If it means the brand will eschew black, silver and white as the primary paint colors for their cars, that would be a bold and welcome move. The roads are too populated with “safe” car colors.

A short video advertisement was released on social media to accompany Jaguar’s new brand reveal, and to say it was polarizing downplays the reaction. It’s been overly politicized by far too many as being “woke,” in my opinion. The ad’s diversity is not a negative or a positive, rather a reality of modern advertising and I think those opinions miss the forest for the trees.

Another critique from enthusiasts is the lack of the product in the ad. Again, this is not uncommon in the luxury market, where obfuscation or outright hiding of the product is done in favor of a compelling narrative or artistic statement about the brand.

Perhaps intended primarily as a way to communicate the tagline and a venue for utilizing the brand’s new palette of exuberant colors, the ad falls flat for me on several fronts. It’s boring, for one, and has no story. Luxury is all about story and emotion in its artistic advertising. It’s trite for another. For heck’s sake the line “break moulds” is paired with a sledgehammer, straight out of freshman Art Direction. Honestly, it feels like it was produced direct from a mood board developed 3 or 4 years ago for a cosmetics line, not a car manufacturer. Finally, For a brand exalting an emotion like exuberance, the tone from the talent in the ad is awfully morose.

On December 2, 2024 Jaguar is scheduled to unveil its new EV vehicle design at Art Basel in Miami, Florida. This is a smart venue selection for a brand that wants to align itself with art and I can’t fault it. I do hope they follow it up with appearances at places that, you know, automotive journalists go.

Jaguar has playfully been teasing details of the Design Vision Concept they will unveil on 12/2, and tactically I think it’s great. It keeps the conversation going well after the release of the brand elements, and piques curiosity as to how those brand principles have inspired the vehicle design or vice versa.

So far, the teased elements suggest some genuine boldness relative to what we’ve seen from other car manufacturers. An overall minimalist form with few body creases and dramatically striped rear—echoing the strikethrough mark—are evident in the first teaser image. A fascinating second image showcases some inventive use of flexible materials that combine metal and an almost leather or wood-like finish.

I’m very excited to see the car revealed, with the caution that it could be a disaster of a design. Regardless, the teases are a smart piece of marketing, whether you hate what you’ve seen or you’re intrigued. Undeniably, anticipation for 12/2 is high.

In summary, the strategy behind Jaguar’s new brand reveal feels generally sound given their business goals. It’s the creative execution that is lacking, in my opinion. Perhaps when we see the car in a week’s time, it’ll all come together—but I’m dubious.

It’s a very aggressive move to shift Jaguar further upmarket, but it makes a certain amount of sense. Jaguar’s always been a fairly low-manufacture company, and an unprofitable one at that. If they move to an ultra-luxury space, it should generate higher profits at that lower volume. That’s a big “if,” depending very much on marketing and design that seduces buyers away from other brands at that price point. I understand why Jaguar felt it needed to be dramatic, but lament the loss of its heritage.

No matter what you think of the marketing so far, there’s likely been more conversation in the automotive and national news for Jaguar than there’s been in the last 10 years. They say any press is good press, and if that’s the case this is probably considered a success for the marketing and design team. Actually, I’m certain a brand reveal for Jaguar that went completely unnoticed would’ve been seen as disastrous.

Contrary to what many think, bold and creative design is by nature polarizing and will “alienate” buyers. Luxury brands don’t try to be everything for everybody—that’s the job of mainstream brands like Toyota and Volkswagen. For the sake of the brand, I hope this new direction finds success, even if it is a very different Jaguar from the one we’ve known.

Jaguar is dead. Long live Jaguar.

Wolf and Mare provides car finding, appraisals, and auction services for buyers and sellers of collector European cars. If you’re interested in acquiring an overseas car, give us a call or drop a line!