To mark the launch of Kia’s new business strategy and updated slogan, ‘movement that inspires’, the car brand has revealed a new logo created to look like a handwritten signature, which was developed by a German agency, CR has been told.

The logo design features a parallel between the stem of the K and the diagonal stroke of the A, which now has the appearance of being italicised, arguably costing the wordmark slightly when it comes to legibility. Although the symmetry of the wordmark loses it some of its handwritten look, there’s a clear rhythmic quality – like a waveform or a heart rate graph – that taps into the idea of movement at the centre of the new strategy and slogan.

The new look follows a spate of high profile logo redesigns from car brands in the past year or so, including BMW, Vauxhall, Rolls-Royce and Nissan, which have overwhelmingly leaned towards flat design in a bid to work across digital. As Wolff Olins’ Forest Young wrote in a CR article last year, the slimming down of these logos with reduced embellishments – which includes Kia’s removal of the roundel from its old logo – also suggests a “lighter ecological footprint”.

Whereas some of the redesigns have lost aspects of their character over the course of being stripped back, Kia’s new look feels like a dramatic upgrade of its dated predecessor. The new logo has already been rolled out across Kia’s website and social media, while its use across Kia’s future car line up – which is expected to place a greater focus on electric vehicles – will be revealed in an online showcase event next week.