The word “Porsche”, without more. A simple and direct name. In 1948 this was all that was necessary, according to the vision of the firm’s pragmatic creators, to define a brand that now, 75 years later, has become an automotive legend.
Legend has it that the original aluminum lettering was made by an apprentice with a jigsaw and was designed to feature on the Porsche 356 “No. 1” Roadster that competed and won at the Hofgarten race in Innsbruck, Austria. But today we don’t recognize a Porsche by those letters, but by its famous black horse shield from the Stuttgart flag.
Already in March 1951, Dr. Ottomar Domnick, one of the first self-confessed Porsche enthusiasts, took the initiative. This doctor and art collector from Stuttgart organized a competition in the German art academies. He launched “The Porsche Prize” to define the logo that should represent the new brand. The prize offered for creating a logo was 1,000 German marks. However, none of the submitted designs lived up to what Porsche management had in mind.
Some time later, at a business dinner in New York at the end of 1951, Max Hoffman, the all-powerful importer of the brand in the US, spoke with Ferry Porsche, founder of the company, and rescued that idea of ??designing an emblem. After this conversation, the following note dated December 27 appeared in Ferry’s notebook: “Steering wheel decorated with the word ‘Porsche’ and the Stuttgart coat of arms or similar.”
In 1952, the designer Franz Xaver Reimspieß, a talented draughtsman, created the decisive design: a rearing horse, taken from the coat of arms of the city of Stuttgart and depicted within the outlines of a golden shield. These elements, coupled with the name of Stuttgart at the top, denoted a clear commitment to automobile production in Zuffenhausen. The red and black state colors that surround it, as well as the antlers, are inherited from the traditional emblem of Württemberg-Hohenzollern, with the Porsche logo forming a protective arch over everything else.
The Porsche shield, like his creations, is a complex work of art, unifying much of what distinguishes the prestigious German brand, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. It’s also clear proof that projects that are carried out with conviction and come straight from the heart can have a big impact. From that moment on, Porsche had a logo capable of impressing not only on its vehicles, but also on letterheads, advertisements and publications. However, it would not be without controversy.
To understand what a detailed shield with many colors meant, you have to go back in time. In the 1950s, color printing was still very expensive and quite complicated. Not all printers had suitable machines nor was it easy to precisely create plates or set registration marks so that all shapes would lie exactly on top of each other. So creating a crisp, clear image or graphic without print screen slippage was tricky.
Also, the Porsche shield did not look as stylish as a black and white version. Porsche Sales Managers and the dealer organization also saw another problem, which was addressed by writing to Porsche and its Head of Advertising, Hermann Lapper, in 1961: “The different colors and many details taken together do not provide a compact visual effect. and coherent in road traffic”. In addition, there was another problem: the horse on the Porsche shield looked too much like the logo of the Reutter auto body company (not to mention another famous Italian sports car company also with a black horse standing on its hind legs…).
The Mercedes-Benz star and the Volkswagen logo (also the work of Reimspieß) were presented as examples of good design. So, after this appreciation, new sketches were created in collaboration with Hanns Lohrer with the aim of simplifying the shapes and colors to make it more impactful and identifiable. A highly talented artist, Lohrer was responsible for many influential Porsche posters and advertisements in the 1950s and 1960s. He was a professional who, like Erich Strenger, another leading graphic designer of the time, left his mark on this era of Porsche.
Hanns Lohrer was entrusted, at the beginning of the sixties, with the difficult and important task of creating a new shield. Initially, it would be launched with the successor to the Porsche 356, whose project responded to the internal name “T8 Program”. But of those proposals -fortunately- none of them finally came to fruition.
Presumably, the decision was made that the logo in use since 1952 was already too established for such a drastic and sudden change in direction in logo design to be considered a good idea. Thanks to that wise decision, today German sports cars still sport what is already the sixth evolution of that legendary and unmistakable design.
This same year 2023, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary, Porsche undertook its most recent identity update. Brushed precious metal, three-dimensional honeycomb structure, new drawing of the horse and a more subtle golden color; These have been some of the most noticeable differences between the company’s modernized shield and its immediate predecessor.
“The celebration of ’75 years of Porsche sports cars’ is the occasion to thoroughly redesign this element of the brand image,” said Michael Mauer, Vice President of Style Porsche. “With its much cleaner and more avant-garde execution, the new crest communicates the character of Porsche. We have reinterpreted historical features and combined them with innovative design elements, such as a honeycomb structure and brushed metal. The result is aesthetically ambitious and trends a bridge between the history and the future of the brand”.
