citroen Logo - History, Design, and Meaning

The original Citroën logo was created in 1919 by the brand's founder, André Citroën, whose family company specialized in the design and production of helical gears. The herringbone teeth of the gears inspired the famous chevron logo.

The original Citroën logo featured yellow and blue colors, with an emblem composed of oval-framed chevrons in fine lines, creating a sophisticated and light design.

The blue and yellow color scheme remained, but blue became the dominant color. The oval emblem was placed on a solid blue octagon, with bolder and brighter yellow lines, giving the logo a modern and crisp look.

The only version of the Citroën logo with an additional graphical element featured a white swan facing left, placed in the center of a round logo, with two chevrons above and a blue bottom part symbolizing water.

This was the first time the wordmark appeared on the brand's icon, located on a blue background with a wave shape.

The octagon returned, now more confident and framed in yellow, with a Citroën wordmark below the chevrons. The letter 'I' featured a dot on top, balancing the two dots of 'Ë' and adding a touch of irony.

The logo was redesigned with a modern approach, removing the wordmark and enlarging the three-dimensional chevrons, with different shapes for the two teeth. Bright yellow remained the main color, with no more blue, and a thin contour of a horizontally oriented oval as a background.

The Citroën logo returned to its original color palette, but the irregular 3D chevrons remained, now placed in a white circle inside a blue square. The brand's wordmark was placed in a white rectangle and executed in a bold blue typeface, in all caps.

The color scheme of the logo changed dramatically, with two white chevrons placed in a red square. The wordmark became larger, with clear, confident lines in black.

The logo, designed by Landor Associates, restored the symmetry of the chevrons and made them three-dimensional again. The color palette changed to silver-gray and red, with silver for the emblem and red for the wordmark.

It is a sleek and stylish logo, portraying the brand as strong and reliable, reflecting its power and passion.

The Citroën logo has a flat and simple design, yet it is full of style and sophistication. It is modern and luxurious, with gray color accentuating the sleek lines of its custom typeface, while the emblem appears more confident than ever.

The 2019 redesign played with the shade of gray on the primary Citroën logo, using a darker and deeper tone, making the badge look more distinctive and professional. The chevrons on the emblem became more compact and narrow, adding balance to the composition.

In 2021, the brand introduced a badge where its name took precedence. The logo, used for several months, featured a heavily enlarged uppercase logotype, with a small solid black emblem on the left, set in plain black against a white background.

The 2022 redesign created a sharp geometric badge for the legendary French automaker. The triangular chevron emblem in plain black is now enclosed in an oval frame and accompanied by a clean futuristic uppercase logotype in a sleek sans-serif font with horizontally extended contours.

The legendary Citroën emblem features an image of two helical gears, patented by André Citroën. The gears resemble two 'V' letters turned upside-down. In almost all logo versions, the two chevron arrows are identical.

The color palette of the emblem changed several times throughout its history, but the chevrons have always remained a part of the brand's logo.