Unveiled on the Museu Nacional d’Artwork de Catalunya in Barcelona as a part of the 2024 prizegiving ceremony, the new id for MotoGP types half of a bigger visible overhaul that permeates each stage of how the viewers will devour the premier class of bike racing, from art work, movement graphics, typography, visible and verbal id.
Let's check out why it's modified, what works, what doesn't and examine the inevitable backlash…
Why the change?
Whereas Liberty Media should be closing in on its acquisition of MotoGP, the choice to refresh the model id for MotoGP could have been taken lengthy beforehand in preparation for a brand new period of selling the championship with a visible route extra befitting of a number one international sequence in 2025 and past.
The final iteration of the MotoGP brand was launched in 2007 and to say the media panorama has advanced considerably since then is an understatement.
If our web site analytics are something to go by, you’re extremely prone to be studying this text within the palm of your hand, one thing considerably much less frequent 17 years in the past.
Consumption of the game could be predominantly TV broadcast first; the primary iPhone had solely simply been launched. At the moment the peak of social media sophistication was MySpace and Fb was barely a toddler.
Quick ahead 17 years to multi-platform, multi-format media consumption, the place a recognisable brand has to work in every little thing from a near-microscopic profile avatar barely a number of millimetres throughout, proper as much as multi-storey grandstand branding. This evolution has made the now-superseded brand unfit for function. This alongside the awkward relationship between the typography and brand additional strengthened two visible components not fairly in concord.
MotoGP isn't simply competing for consideration in opposition to different comparative motorsports. It's competing on your consideration in opposition to the broader leisure business, in addition to every little thing life throws at you, together with that Sunday job-list pinned to your fridge.
Its rebranding associate Pentagram is an unbiased company effectively versed in respiration new life into the model identities of worldwide companies (its main purchasers within the leisure sector embody Amazon Prime, Warner Brothers and Channel 4 within the UK) and its temporary could have been to current MotoGP as “essentially the most thrilling sport on earth”.
What Works
Scalability and legibility
Whereas the type of the earlier brand was a recognisable abstraction of a chequered flag and a visible reference to its Tower of Champions trophy, the MotoGP lettering obtained misplaced upon scaling.
This new brand dispenses with graphic components and brandmark to seem more-so as wordmark and in consequence is rather more versatile than the earlier iteration. Scale the emblem proper down and you’ll nonetheless clearly learn MotoGP.
General, I do just like the adaptability of the brand new title typography, which has a playful fluidity to it. Being adaptable to a number of languages with various accents (often called diacritical marks) can also be essential for a sport reaching international audiences. The ‘MGP Textual content’ fonts (used throughout the longer type blocks of textual content comparable to the web site) additionally make enhancements from an accessibility perspective.
Nonetheless, the titling fonts do sail fairly near the identical decision that company Wieden+Kennedy (tasked with rebranding Method 1 in 2017) discovered with their growth of F1’s Torque and Turbo typography. This isn’t a matter of unhealthy execution, simply kindred options to comparable briefs.
The broader present
The brand new id creates a barely higher cohesion with Moto2, Moto3 and MotoE, in a means that felt barely disconnected earlier than.
All of the sequence at the moment are aligned and united as one recognisable visible bundle. There may be probably a danger that this shut alignment reduces the visible worth of the premier GP class, however this shall be simpler to guage once we see the graphics in anger on a race weekend.
Enjoying properly with others
The six official sponsors of MotoGP are a logistics firm, an airline, a German automotive firm, a 0% beer, a tyre producer and a luxurious watch model. These multi-million greenback industrial offers are massively necessary to the funding and attain of the championships, and as such they have to be proven as partnerships on equal footing.
With the extra stylised earlier iteration of the emblem, the smaller weighting of the wordmark put the MotoGP lettering because the smallest component. This new scale redresses the steadiness, which means a partnership with a serious model will seem extra proportionally harmonious.
What Doesn’t
The transfer in direction of ‘MGP’ as a shorthand watermark and social avatar appears like a miss-step. I might by no means affiliate MGP with MotoGP and for the sake of saving one syllable and three characters, it appears like minimalism for the sake of it.
To me, MGP is the Manx Grand Prix, however this aligns with MotoGP’s oft blind spot in direction of the world of street racing. It doesn’t get significantly better within the help sequence, shortened to M2, M3 (whats up BMW M partnership) and ME (Despicable is likely to be too robust, however definitely not fascinating or distinctive).
Visible tropes of motorsport can create some cliches.
Shelling out with the chequered flag appears like a smart step, however most of the time the leaning type of the letters is the place identities can develop into fairly homogenised.
MotoGP has extra of a reputable declare to a lean-angle than different sequence, with the brand new M pitched at a 65 diploma angle. Nonetheless, find these flowing traces, the M has ended up the place there’s a pinch of the W of World WCR, and a touch of the M of F1 Supervisor.
I do really like the superbly round Os (mentioned to have been impressed by wheel geometry) however they draw the attention like a spectacular goal fixation greater than anything – which means the attention is drawn to this primary, then dashes left to learn the emblem in full. That is nearly to the purpose the place the indirect prolonged M feels disconnected from the remainder of the wordmark.
In rising the viewers there shall be an goal to tempt the newer era of F1 followers to look to two-wheeled racing, and this route reassures them that sure, they’re in the precise place for top-level motorsport and that familiarity shall be necessary.
Nonetheless, I’d wish to have seen extra bravery in breaking a few of the visible boundaries and really set the game aside. Divisive because it was, the Method E’s vibrant rebrand (due to a collaboration with lettering artist Rachel Pleasure Worth) actually stands out in opposition to a sea of neo-futuristic flowing typefaces.
The Inevitable Backlash
Followers are understandably connected to the outdated brand because it's been watermarked on display screen all through the very best moments of the final 17 years. You first noticed that brand when Casey Stoner received the championship, and each on-track scrap, overtake and journey to the gravel lure has been accompanied by the flag motif.
It’s optimistic visible affiliation and burn-in, and that emotive connection is tough to unpick.
Whereas the emotive and verbose launch video waxed lyrical about followers being an integral a part of the story, that is branding that should succeed more-so in a social, broadcast and industrial sense greater than any viewers loyalty.
MotoGP. Sooner. Ahead. Fearless. pic.twitter.com/bXElTEpNVU
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) November 17, 2024
If followers don’t heat to it, they’re unlikely to boycott the sequence on account of a unpleasant sequence brand and any grumblings about it are measured as ‘engagement’.
I do just like the outdated brand and the way it mirrored the championship trophy, however from a sensible design perspective I see the logic within the new iteration working for an leisure enterprise.
What it has misplaced in distinctiveness it has gained in flexibility (a pattern throughout each international firm searching for a rebrand), which shall be a saving grace to designers tasked with making the emblem persistently recognisable throughout all platforms on which MotoGP will seem.
Once I look again on the pre-2017 F1 brand, it now feels a bit of quaint and outdated, however nonetheless sits in a comfortable nostalgic nook of my coronary heart. I really feel the identical shall be true of this new imaginative and prescient for MotoGP, and that’s tremendous; it’s what occurs on observe that really issues.
