Peugeot is a major French car brand, part of PSA Peugeot Citroen, the second largest European car maker.Its vehicles are distributed in more than 150 countries and are universally recognised by their lion logo.
Peugeot’s roots go back to 19th-century coffee mill and bicycle manufacturing in France. The company produced its first automobile in 1891. It was on 20 November 1858 that Emile Peugeot first registered the use of a lion as the brand’s emblem. He asked Julien Blazer, a goldsmith and engraver in the Franche-Comté region of France, to produce the logo for identifying all Peugeot products.
To celebrate its 200th anniversary Peugeot has rebranded courtesy of an in-house design team. The new age lion has apparently got faster and more sensitive with the tagline ‘motion and emotion’. But is it a lion? The reworking or re-interpretation of many high profile corporate logos inevitably prompts often adverse comment from the design community, and this one has not escaped the critical gaze of many outspoken brand experts....
The reworking has been likened to a bear, a wolf, a jaguar on hind legs, a man in a silly rigid bear suit, a man/bear/pig, video game creature or the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz!
One of the more intelligent comments was “the least appealing and emotive rendering they (Peugeot) have ever used”.
I think it is certainly more modern but has strayed from its classical lion heritage. Compare it to the Holden lion and it could be suggested that some unfortunate breeding with other species may have occurred. Naughty lion.
What do you think?
Tony Heywood is an international branding consultant and founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
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