The F-type couldn’t save it,
but an SUV did.

Business goals drive branding.

I can understand knee-jerk Jaguar reactions from those outside the branding world, but a lot of brand experts and designers in the field should know better.

Professionally-led public design executions and worse yet, ‘fixing’ commercial logos only devalues real-world design work. You show no value or consideration for the business you’re attempting to represent. It’s hard to argue for design’s place at the big table when we willingly throw any shred of credibility out the window.

If you haven’t bought a Jaguar in the last five years, your opinion probably isn’t valid. If you’ve bought an SUV or hybrid in that time, it’s likely you’re the reason for this change.

Sales have been declining since 2018 – Jaguar has long been extinct. Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is owned by Tata. One quick look at the business position shows it will become the Polestar to their Volvo; marketing itself to a wealthy, stylish* LR audience not content with existing PHEV options.

Jaguar started making SUVs to stay relevant but guess who they lost sales to? Land Rover. Why buy an F-Pace when you can buy a Range?

Solution: Carve out your own niche in a saturated market.

Marginally, Jaguar would find it very difficult to serve the (constantly shrinking) sports car market. If you own an old Jaguar, keep it!

As far as the launch itself goes, Lee Rolston of Jones Knowles Ritchie makes a good point about revealing the logo in isolation; ‘a void has been created and “filled by opinion”’. It’s a hard slope to climb out of, but design bullying has poured engine oil on the slope. There’s clearly more to come, so let’s either reserve full judgement until all is revealed, or try to understand why this decision was made, just for a second.

When big agency owners bang on about bravery* and brands taking risks, I have to stand up for Jaguar here. How can we promote bravery and pushing design limits when the first glimpse of something different* is totally dismissed as heresy?

They had to do something different. Whether you agree or not with how it looks in form is besides the point, the survival of Jaguar was key.

Now, show me the cars!

*entirely subjective

—Craig