In 1919 André-Gustave Citroen founded the well known french automobile manufacturing company Citroen. Over the past 98 years the business has evolved, along with its branding. This is their 2nd most current logo, designed in 1985.
It’s a lovely bold and powerful design. The singular primary red colour has been paired with two monochrome shades (black and white) really making the graphic pop. Red is a strong and vibrant colour communicating the ideas of power, passion and ambition. Power can relate to the force behind the company and vehicular engines, passion speaks to the consumers, showing them they deeply care for their business and ambition shows the strive and dedication in the industry. The limited colours do create a simplistic design but it also made a distinct image.
Likewise the graphic is rather plain. The signature arrow shapes are key to Citroen’s image though and they date back to the founding of the business when they discovered the herringbone gear (double helical). This iconic gear texture was immediately picked up on and is seen in even the earliest of their logos.
Personally I feel like they are trying to pay homage to their heritage by featuring the shapes in white. This technique is known as reverse (white/light text or graphic on a black/dark background) and it is used to attract the eye of the viewer to that particular component. Here it is highlighting the arrows, making it the main feature of the logo.
This consistency of shape in their logos is a great way to maintain a corporate identity and have a recognizable/well known image. Immediately when people see the gear shape, Citroen will come to mind.
The typeface used was a great choice, but was it really necessary? In the early years of Citroen’s advertising I could understand how the name is needed (even though it doesn’t appear) to actually establish the brand. But now that its so well known I feel that it doesn’t need the name and that it actually takes away from the success of the design and graphic. Form wise its a clean cut font that unties well with the sharp angular shapes of the logo.
In regards to its overall layout, it is very neat and structured. This is achieved by various factors. Firstly the use of a symmetrical arrangement means every component of the design has been placed along a vertical centre line, making it sharp and ordered. A clear and capitalised typeface makes for easy reading and a clear identification of the the business. Lastly the clean cut shapes are precise and the square shows the sincerity of the company as a legitimate business as squares are seen as a shape denoting seriousness. Together this all creates a well defined form for the logo.
Competitors at the time were varied in comparison to Citroen’s logo, but one in particular was strikingly similar. Saturn was a new automobile manufacturer in the year of the Citroen logo at hand, 1985. Clearly there are resemblances in their branding. It too uses a red burst of colour with white cutouts and clean cut text aligned perfectly. This would have caused big problems for the two companies as having a logo that strikingly matches to another creates the unfortunate combination for confusion.
Although some may deem Citroen’s design as simple, I like it. Its memorable in its minimalism and clearly gained them success.
Today the current logo is slightly different, whilst still relating to the signature appearance of the brand.
Immediately I saw that it was far more 3D with a beveled shine on the herringbone arrows. Its metallic fill relates to the sheen of the materials featured on their vehicles and gives the logo a more industrial feel to it.
The typeface has also changed, but kept the capitalised style. Now it is more of a curved font, uniting with the more curvaceous arrow marks. And the fill of the text has taken on the colour of the the previous logo’s square. This creates a nice link in the history of the company.
