Jaguar reveals massive 'Exuberant Modernism' rebrand and new logos

Jaguar has a new logo. Well, three of them, with a super-modern new font, a new take on the classic leaper, and a wholly new monogram. For what?

For its coming all-electric era, that's what.

As it teased early last year and then revealed in some detail this past March, the company has dumped its elderly line-up of combustion models (and the seven-year-old, once revolutionary I-Pace EV) in favour of three new electric models. To start with.

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Carmakers can't just reveal everything at once, of course, and so our first introduction to the new Jaguar is its new JaGUar wordmark and two new "Maker's Marks" – a fresh take on the classic 'leaper' cat, and a new JR monogram that looks ready to seal a royal decree in hot wax.

Up next will be the reveal of an actual car, albeit in Design Vision concept form, on December 3 at the Miami Art Week.

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Until then, we get a new branding manifesto built around the notion of 'Exuberant Modernism', and there's more than a little of Apple's "Think Different" about its reborn "Copy Nothing" mantra.

Did you spy the one with the sledgehammer? Jobs would be flattered, if the 'Think Different' line weren't already another way of saying 'A copy of nothing'.

Like something out of The Hunger Games, the campaign's commercially diverse models are draped in ostentatious statement garb with haircuts to match, leaving one to wonder what this means on the actual product end of it all.

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Time will tell, whether on December 3 or later, although this piece by Car Dealer Magazine UK's James Baggott suggests the brand is all-in on a seemingly Balenciaga-inspired level of extravagance and chic excess.

Baggott writes:

"Jaguar’s passionate team spoke for most of the day about how they plan to ‘delete ordinary’ and ‘live vivid’. Whatever that means…

"In what, at times, felt like a drunken dream, Jaguar personnel walked journalists through its plans to ‘reimagine’ the much-loved brand over the next few years.

"Calling it a ‘complete reset’, McGovern at one point told journalists that his team had ‘not been sniffing the white stuff – this is real’."

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The Germans can have minimalism; Jaguar is here for the hedonistic maximalists? If nothing else, it's probably goodbye to Jaguar's traditional buyers. But, hey, maybe the classic Jaguar buyer is coming into their experimental era?

In all, it's a bold rebrand that looks to the bleeding edge of fashion for its cues. Legacy luxury auto brands have arguably been fairly stagnant in their approach to brand, trapped, as McGovern describes. He says Jaguar has "not been allowed to be unique," but its new look will "stir the emotions once again" – and "make you feel uncomfortable".

Presumably he means uncomfortable in a more encouraging way than the strange feelings that mixed-case JaGUar logo is giving me...