I love logo design. Before I was America’s eighth-least tolerable Automobile Dipshit, I was a graphic designer, and I really got excited by logos. Good logos are all about reduction and recognizability. They should be as legible when rendered in full-color on a Jumbotron as they are when stencil spray-painted on a wooden shipping crate. They’re design distilled to its absolute bare essentials, which can also mean that when they go wrong, they tend to go really wrong. Like Kia’s new logo, introduced in 2021, which seems to be so confusing to understand that 30,000 people every month Google “KN car,” because Kia’s new logo looks more like that than it looks like KIA. Luckily, it’s easy to fix, as we’ll show here with our official Autopian Technical Service Bulletin.
This eye-rolling and hilarious fact has been reported on by a number of outlets, but I think I first saw the number of confused searches in this tweet:
the new kia logo is so unreadable that at least 30k people a month search for the "KN car" ever since its debut pic.twitter.com/jRj25JoAPp
— Ashwinn (@Shwinnabego) November 17, 2022
I remember when Kias with the new logo started to appear, and I think the only positive thing I heard was that the new look reminded people of fond memories of Nine Inch Nails:
So, there’s that. But that doesn’t change the fact that Kia’s new logo absolutely reads like “K-backwards-N.” I mean, I get that it’s fun to eliminate the crossbar of the A so it looks like a lambda, but in the context of this design vocabulary it just doesn’t work.
That’s not to say it’s not an improvement in some ways; the old Kia logo was, at best, boring. Here, let’s look at the history of Kia logos:
Man, what a journey! I kind of like the happy flag-waving of the 1986 logo, and that inverted-Q thing is pleasingly simple and cryptic. I think the real mystery here is why Kia didn’t just adopt the Korean “flying K” logo for global markets, since that is abstracted enough to not suffer from alphanumeric legibility problems. And it looks good, sort of evoking lightning strikes or knees bent mid-run or a pair of bird profiles in flight. It’s not bad!
Of course, a logo does not need to spell out a carmaker’s name; plenty of logos don’t, but we equate them with the brand just fine. Think about Mercedes’ tri-point star or Subaru’s stylized Pleiades or Peugeot’s lion or Audi’s four rings of the old Auto Union or a leaping jaguar, and so on. But what makes those logos different is that they’re not actively confusing. This isn’t about a non-wordmark logo, it’s a problem of a logo made of letters looking like the wrong fucking letters. If the Mercedes-Benz star looked like a P or something, it’d be weird, for example.
But, no, that’s not the path Kia chose. Instead it went with the confusing not-KN logo, and here we are. But you know me, I’m the kind of guy who’s going to change the 1157s in your taillight rather than curse your darkness. So, with that in mind, I think I have an easy solution to Kia’s logo problem. Just this minor tweak:
See? Easy! Now it reads like KIA again! And you don’t lose the stylized look or anything, it just breaks up the ᴎ-shape in the logo so it can read like two separate, recognizable glyphs. Even better, this change was specifically designed to be able to be retrofitted to all affected Kias on the road! In fact, our very own crazy designer of things, The Bishop, spent some crucial procrastinating time mocking up the packaging for this service part and the required technical service bulletin and inevitable recall notice:
Look at that, Kia! We got your back! Now go call your supplier of adhesive-backed-chrome-look things and tell them you need a little hyphen-shaped deal and get the ball rolling.
I’m a big fan of the 1986 logo version ever since I found out it existed.
A recall over a badge has happened before. Honda issued a recall on Odysseys a few years ago because the “Odyssey” badge was placed on the wrong side of the tailgate. They cited that the badge in the “wrong” spot could cause confusion and imply that the vehicle was previously damaged, thereby lowering resale value.
I’ve actually been thinking about the Kia logo for a while now, and my take has been that the change from the prior logo in the circle to the current one is one of the best changes in logo history! I like the new one a lot, and the old one was really really bad.
They shouldn’t change a thing.
r/kerning
Nice work, but needs a include a 3d printed tool to align the sticker. Or, at least an STL to one. You know this is going to happen, may as well get ahead of it.
Once I read it as I K I A and now I can’t unsee it. I find myself reflecting that it seems everybody’s getting into the automobile market . . . and wondering what their showroom is like?
I had one of the first Kia Carnivals in the area. I am just now starting to see a few more around. I for one really like the new logo as is, and I was really excited to get the first model with the new badging. I will not be asking the dealer to “fix” it. I like having the weird van with a weird logo.
That said, I would slap the 1986 badge on the van in a heartbeat if I could find one.
Kia should offer a selection from among all of the badges as an extra-cost option, applied by the dealership as part of the sale. (Maybe as part of a little kimchi ceremony in the showroom?)
“They should be as legible when rendered in full-color on a Jumbotron as they are when stencil spray-painted on a wooden shipping crate. ”
I say similar about billboard advertising.
“I bet that looked good on a desktop screen” but it’s indecipherable as you drive by at 60 mph.
Like an old boss of mine dismissively used to say: this is not a logo, it is a font.
That’s a bold statement from a website that turned the A in their name into a 4 for their logo.
Go on, look at it. Once you see it…
Think of all the free marketing KIA is getting off of this between you guys, Doug, carscoops, and all the other automotive journalists going on about it. If they’re smart they’ll buy up all the google ads around the “KN car” search terms. Instant SEO.
Like others have said I haven’t had that confusion because I was already familiar with Kia as a brand but I can see why so many others would think it’s new. The solution pitched here is great, the other one I’ve seen is to separate the letters so they don’t all just run into each other, I think that helps too, anything that splits the I from the A.
As an aside, can we start saying for weird things like this that need fixing that they need ‘Torching’. Some times all you can do to fix something is to Torch it.
I own a (pre-KN) Kia, but when the new logo came out, I had to stare at it a while to figure out what it was trying to do. A K combined with ocean waves? It would look better with a crossbar at the bottom of the A, but I guess in Greece they’d read that as a delta and get confused. The old logo is boring, but the new one is stupid. Torch’s update manages to make it less stupid, but ugly as well as boring (sorry, Torch!). A chrome hamster would be too obscure, how about a fish? Does anybody use a fish as their logo? All I can find is Dongfeng, which might be two dolphins making love, or not.
In the near future someone is going to owe you money. If I had a Kia I would buy this so fast!
THANK YOU! As a car nerd I see this all the time, I know it’s “KIA” but even I still see “KN”.. irks me!
I LOVE your fix, but one touch I’d change: instead of the little crossbar, just continue the lambda to the left, horizontally, to make an open triangle “A”. Almost like a delta. This would be more seamless imo and still clearly delineate the “A” letter.
My ColoYota
https://imgur.com/a/ennGfzG
Why not use the KDM logo worldwide? Kia is the only “K” manufacturer out there and the only other “K” badges I can think of are the square ones on early 80s Chryslers.
I was sitting behind an EV6 yesterday thinking about this exact thing. I think the issue is that they swept the A. If it was actually A shaped it might be fine?
Also, how ahead of its time the Aztek was. A solid 2/3 of “suvs” these days make the Aztek look completely sane. Cars these days look so bloated and plastic I’m convinced someone built a time machine to hire body kit designers straight out of the 90s. Why are there 400 different body lines on the front of Hyundais? Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Who the heck is looking at these things and thinking “yeah, that looks good”
The install kit does not include the little doodad that accurately aligns the addendum to the logo.
C’mon guys, even the most basic phone screen protector kit has an alignment tool in it.
That really is a bazillion times better. Why the Bishop isn’t up there in the pantheon of great modern design with Raymond Loewy and Charles & Ray Eames, I’ll never understand.
Also super disappointed the QR code doesn’t take you here: https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ
Kudos to you sir. I’ve been had.
I never knew that Kia made personal water craft in the mid-eighties.
No no no. That’s the smoke bellowing out of their factories.
In a rapidly industrializing nation, that was actually something to be proud of. A cousin of the hammer and sickle motif.
At first I couldn’t figure out the Mitsubishi-looking original logo, until I remembered what the situation in South Korea actually was in 1944….
Ohhhh yeah… which is funny, because Kia linked up with Mazda and Mitsubishi went with Hyundai.
I also remember being told that the one described as a “flag” logo is usually referred to as the “smokestack”; nearly incomprehensible nowadays.
The flag one does look like a factory smokestack. Kinda polluty looking, tbh.
That was my instant thought, it’s a factory with the ‘chimney’ (upright of the K, pumping out blue smoke. Crazy for a corporate logo!
The fix is pretty obvious, though, tbh.
Really, take it a step farther and nip the top of the arm of the K (where it touches the I) and the bottom leg of the A (where it touches the I) to make the filler bar for the A. That way the letters are even more distinct.
Since I can’t post photos, here’s what that would look like:
K I A
I see plenty of Kias in the US with the KDM flying K logo. Are these all owner customizations or was it a dealer option or something?
Owner customization, my younger brother stuck the Korean badges and hood ornament on his Equus, it’s a thing Hyundai/Kia owners do for some reason
I think the most shocking part of all of this is the seemingly staggering number of people who don’t know which way round N is…
Yes, it’s clearly “KI” in Cyrillic and it tried to warn about the Russian attack on Kiev but ran out of letters.
It’s jewelry. I had a Hyundai Genesis sedan before they renamed them Genesis G80. Within one month I replaced the dreary Hyundai logo with the Korean Genesis wing badges.
USDM car or was your OG Genesis sedan from another market? I was under the impression all of the Hyundai Genesis sedans before they spun off to be a separate brand didn’t have a the Hyundai badge on them. The coupes did, but never seen a sedan with one, which made sense as Hyundai was trying to differentiate the product from everything else.
https://www.allenturnergenesis.com/genesis-logo/
This dealership even calls out the fact it was the winged badge only…Maybe the previous owner added it on?
I bought my new 2011 Hyundai Genesis Sedan as a leftover in 2012. It had the big, chrome Hyundai H on the trunk. Nothing on the hood. Ordered the genuine parts from Korea. The winged badge fit in the same mounting holes on the trunk. The smaller, front badge was adhesive only. I wasn’t hiding it’s Hyundai-ness, the Korean Genesis emblems were just so much better looking. It’s hard to find one that hasn’t been changed out.
Mark this up as TIL as I’ve personally never seen one with handshake H logo, but you are correct. It’s like they flip flopped back and forth as ’08 model articles such as C/D show the winged badge, but their article on the ’12 has the H. I guess that’s Hyundai for us lol
USDM. I bought a new 2011 Hyundai Genesis Sedan in early 2012. It came with the big, chrome oval H on the trunk. No emblem on the hood. I ordered a kit from Korea that came with a hood and trunk emblem. The rear winged emblem fit in the same mounting points. I had to clip the hood emblem mounting tabs as there were no holes in the hood. I see from your link that customers were offered a choice of emblems. I wasn’t informed. The wings just looked so much better.
Much like the.. ahem.. Chevys, rocking Holden badges. It’s funny because I grew up seeing people slapping Chevy bow ties on Holdens (just why? It doesn’t even make sense!) and now I get a kick seeing SS’s and GTOs with Commodore or Monaro badging.
My favorite spot was a Buick Cascada rebadged as a Vauxhall because…uh…the owner’s a Brit?
https://imgur.com/gallery/55HzGcA
They changed it because no one wants to drive in a car marked “Killed In Action.”
While that might be true for a highly militarised country like the US, it is a complete non-issue for most of the world.
I like the new logo. The previous one was always so milquetoast, fake-Ford. The new one is very Blade Runner futuristic, which matches the swooping lights of the sedans esp.
I’ve always seen it as K I A, but I suppose that’s b/c I knew from the beginning what I was looking at?
The KDM logo looks too much like the Lexus badge at a distance I’d say. Not a problem outside of the U.S., but I can see why it’d be one here.
The old logo looked like a Ford logo, because it was designed for a quick and cheap rebadge of the Ford Festiva
Ford bought a 10% stake in Kia in 1986, which qualified them as the company’s largest single shareholder through most of the ’90s. At one point, Ford was considering buying the entire company, but pivoted to Jacques Nasser’s Premier Automotive Group strategy instead and dumped their shares on Hyundai
I thought it was so the badge fitted in their Korean built ford cortinas
The big downside to the new logo is that it is harder to swap out for the KDM badge.
The best thing about the new logo is that it isn’t recessed, so you can remove the logo without leaving an odd unfilled divot in your body panel.
I wish all logos and option package identifiers were as easy to remove.
That is a good point. If I get a Kia with this logo, removing it will happen pretty quickly.
Glad I’m not the only one. I have liked the new logo since they started using it.
A new startup should call themselves KN cars to capture all these free marketing.