Buick logo revamp came from ‘happy accident’

DETROIT — For more than 60 years, Buick has incorporated some form of a tri-shield design in its logo.

The latest version, making its North American production debut this year on the 2024 Encore GX, draws on that history while also taking a modern tack as the brand transitions toward a fully electric vehicle lineup.

But the change — which arranges the shields horizontally instead of on a diagonal and eliminates the silver ring around them — wasn't planned.

As part of an assignment to draw up the "new face of Buick" for the EV era, the designers worked to reimagine what the brand could look like, said Steve McCabe, Buick's advanced design manager. One such sketch, with a few swooping slash marks where a vehicle badge would sit, errantly got shown to General Motors President Mark Reuss in a design meeting several years ago, sparking interest that would lead to further development of the logo.

Ordinarily, vehicle sketches start out as rough lines and designers fill in details later, McCabe said. For a presentation to company executives, those slash marks generally would have been replaced with a more traditional badge image, designers said.

"This one just happened to be the one that sort of slipped through without us putting a badge on. And when he saw that, he was intrigued by it," said Geoffrey Richmond, a senior exterior designer at Buick whose sketch was the one that made it in front of Reuss. "I think that sort of started the whole conversation."

Richmond and McCabe were not in the meeting with Reuss but said they later learned of his interest.

"The fact that it was just my sketch was just a happy accident. I mean, everybody in the studio was doing these kind of sketches," Richmond said. "Mine happened to be the one that got seen."

Reuss, in a statement to Automotive News, called Buick's new badge "the first significant update to the logo in more than three decades."

"The redesigned columns of the tri-shield incorporate fluid movements that convey motion," Reuss said. "It's sleek and dynamic, and I love that we'll see it on all Buicks going forward into the new era of electrification for the brand and for the company."

Buick has said it plans to have a fully electric lineup by 2030. Last year, it debuted the Wildcat EV concept, which brand leaders have said will influence the design of future production vehicles.

Since 1959, Buick's logo has incorporated a tri-shield and a ring. The shields were meant to symbolize the brand's Invicta, LeSabre and Electra models, said David Haskell, a creative designer for Buick brand identity who refined Richmond's original sketch into the completed logo.

Richmond and his design colleagues were taking a more modern approach with gestures and slashes, said Haskell, whose team removed the circle and spaced the shields apart but next to each other. The design keeps an angled sash that he said helps to maintain brand recognition.

The new design "still feels like Buick," he said. "We feel that people can still recognize like, Oh, this feels modern and new,' but there's some continuity to history that's still significant."

That matters because a logo doesn't appear only on vehicles, McCabe said. It shows up on employee business cards, coffee mugs, the brand's website and dealership signage. The changeover to the new logo will start to happen this year, Buick said.

"You're designing this brand-new face and it's super modern, and from the studio's perspective, then you put the sort of old badge back on it, it sort of dates everything," McCabe said. "It all ties in. It's all part of the bigger story of what we're trying to do with the brand overall."