The automobile brand MINI has quietly released—or is it re-released?—a simplified brand identity, rolling out a new logo on an electric car design in Frankfurt earlier this year.
The brand, first launched in 1959 in response to a fuel shortage at that time, has long been viewed as a fun, smart, fuel-efficient, go-kart-like car. The new logo design reemphasizes the basic nature and MINImalism of the product’s origins. It eliminates three-dimensional shading and gray tones, flattening the design created after BMW acquired the brand in 2000.
Curiously, though, it appears to be the exact same design that was debuted with much fanfare in 2015. Perhaps the slogging realities of production—and the brand is rumored to be moving into the electric vehicle business—are simply catching up with the fleetness of aspirational vision.
Read more behind the new brand here.