Photo: General Motors
A seemingly bland press release from GM, published today, is hiding quite an interesting piece of branding nonsense. You see, the biggest of the Big Three in Detroit has silently changed its brand identity as “General Motors amplifies its EV message.” There are, however, two problems with it.
First things first, what message? The Detroit-based automaker sells only one electric vehicle at the present moment in the guise of the Chevrolet Bolt EV, which is due to be redesigned for the 2022 model year. The Buick, Cadillac, and GMC brands don’t have all-electric options, at least not for the time being. The Hummer EV, which is the first next-generation electric vehicle from General Motors, is expected to go on sale in the third quarter.
Despite the slow roll-out of the BEV3 platform, GM has an ambitious launch schedule for the near-term future. Remember our coverage of the Barclays 2020 Global Automotive Conference? That’s when General Motors has promised “30 new EVs by 2025 globally”, of which two-thirds will be available in North America. Having mentioned the Hummer EV, GMC has confirmed the addition of an SUV option for the Hummer EV and an electric truck.
As for the elephant in the room, that would be the design of the new logo. For the love of all things holy, did General Motors hire the same people that came up with WordArt for Microsoft back in the 1990s? The American automaker has published three variations of the EV-era logo so far in the guise of two monochromatic versions as well as a gradient logo in blue.
General Motors has also changed from capital letters with squared-off lines to lowercase letters with rounded corners, which gives the impression of a PowerPoint presentation for a high-school project if you ask me. The question is, what is hiding behind the redesign that nobody asked for?
“This was a project our team took so personally, not just for ourselves but for the 164,000 employees this logo represents,” said industrial design executive director Sharon Gauci. The gibberish doesn’t end here, though. “At every step, we wanted to be intentional and deliberate because this logo signifies creative and innovative thinking across the global General Motors family.”
Despite the slow roll-out of the BEV3 platform, GM has an ambitious launch schedule for the near-term future. Remember our coverage of the Barclays 2020 Global Automotive Conference? That’s when General Motors has promised “30 new EVs by 2025 globally”, of which two-thirds will be available in North America. Having mentioned the Hummer EV, GMC has confirmed the addition of an SUV option for the Hummer EV and an electric truck.
As for the elephant in the room, that would be the design of the new logo. For the love of all things holy, did General Motors hire the same people that came up with WordArt for Microsoft back in the 1990s? The American automaker has published three variations of the EV-era logo so far in the guise of two monochromatic versions as well as a gradient logo in blue.
General Motors has also changed from capital letters with squared-off lines to lowercase letters with rounded corners, which gives the impression of a PowerPoint presentation for a high-school project if you ask me. The question is, what is hiding behind the redesign that nobody asked for?
“This was a project our team took so personally, not just for ourselves but for the 164,000 employees this logo represents,” said industrial design executive director Sharon Gauci. The gibberish doesn’t end here, though. “At every step, we wanted to be intentional and deliberate because this logo signifies creative and innovative thinking across the global General Motors family.”
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