Fiat Logo, 1968
Armin Vogt and Jean Reiwald's 1968 logo and corporate identity for Fiat.
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In 1899 a group of businessmen and professionals from Turin joined forces to realise a shared dream: to develop an Italian automobile factory that could offer ‘democratic mobility’ and cars ‘designed for life’. This ambitious automaker was Fiat.
By the mid-1960s, Fiat had grown to become the world's seventh largest car maker and had also expanded its manufacturing to include tractors for agriculture, civil and land engineering machinery, automobile components, diesel rail-cars and aero engines. Alongside this, Fiat was also involved in the raw materials trade. This expansion of products and materials catapulted the Italian manufacturer into the international market, distributing many of its products throughout Europe and the U.S.S.R, having taken a large share of the Italian auto market and seeking continued growth.
As the automaker expanded it was felt that its trademark (a logotype of condensed uppercase letterforms) didn’t reflect the increasingly modernised operation, nor its expanding international reach. The decision was made to embark upon the design of a new corporate identity, which would be launched to coincide with Fiat’s 70th anniversary. The project was initiated in 1968 and placed in the capable hands of Swiss designers Armin Vogt and Jean Reiwald.
The basic composition of the new corporate identity system developed by Vogt and Reiwald consisted of four rhomboids with a forward inclination of 18° off the vertical axis, with the letters FIAT placed inside of each. Univers 66 was selected as the typeface as it matched the slanted angle of the rhomboids. The forward momentum created by the combination of shape and type sought to express a sense of speed and dynamism, and establish a functional system in which to unify a growing product catalogue and service offering. White text on blue shapes formed the core palette of the brand.
From the basic components of the logo, a system was built out, extending the rhomboids and type to create a dynamic modular system that could identify the brand with a variety of products and establish the basis for shop and service signage.
This system, to support the growing needs of the automaker, was used in conjunction with a broad colour palette to delineate between car models, services and sub-brands such as OLIOFIAT, Fiats’ oil brand. A further logotype was created to identify genuine Fiat spare parts. This had a double stacked ‘A’ to express the act of exchanging. Additional weights of Univers were used for print ads and communications with titles and headlines set in Univers 76 and text in Univers 46.
Vogt and Reiwald worked wth Fiat to produce various other materials. These included modular shop signage (above) and advertisements and brochure covers (below). Unusually for the time, the adverts were often shot without people, unless absolutely necessary, creating a striking and creative visual impression, making the most of the modular system that was devised.
Although Vogt’s system didn’t survive to the end of the following decade, a version of the logotype lasted right through to the 1990s, and was later used alongside an abstract logo of slanted parallel lines. Both of these were discarded in 1999 when the automaker introduced a new logotype, bringing back the letterforms of a logotype designed in the 1920s.
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