Formula 1Copied

When Liberty Media bought Formula 1, the sport had a famous logo but, as Wieden+Kennedy's Richard Turley put it to Creative Review, no real identity. The new owners commissioned a six-month global research project with fans before the rebrand, the first in 23 years, launched at the Abu Dhabi finale in November 2017 for the 2018 season. Ellie Norman, F1's first director of marketing, led it on the client side.

The old flying-one mark had been designed by Carter Wong in 1994, and W+K's early work was simply an update of it. The final replacement is a wide, low F1 in red built from three simple shapes, which to our eye suggests a car pressed flat to the track. Typefaces were drawn by French designer Marc Rouault, and Creative Review noted the whole system shares an aesthetic with The Designers Republic's work on the 1990s game Wipeout. Because F1 is, in Turley's words, the sport of logos, the system is designed to take on sponsor and team colours.

Design and strategy were led by Richard Turley at Wieden+Kennedy London.

The drivers were the first critics. Lewis Hamilton called the old logo iconic and doubted the new one would match it; Sebastian Vettel said simply that he liked the old one better, as ESPN and The Independent reported. F1 executive Sean Bratches told Motorsport.com the criticism was a good sign because it showed how much fans cared, and said the redesign was aimed at clearer use in digital media.

Ross Brawn, the sport's managing director of motorsport, answered the question of priorities head on in a post-race newsletter quoted by Autosport. Asked whether a logo was really a priority next to grid penalties, cost controls and the racing itself, he said yes: the new mark was far more flexible for merchandise and digital use, it had impact, and the old one had been neither iconic nor memorable. He framed it as a signal to fans that the sport was entering a new era and had to look beyond its own world, especially to younger fans.

Turley admitted the team was up against a very good logo with a lot of heritage, and the old mark's wit is a genuine loss. But the new one is far more practical, built for application rather than as a standalone emblem, and it scales down to broadcast graphics and apps without complaint.