Savvier Second Opinion · No. 2 · 2026-07-27
Range Rover Introduced a New Logo.
Is It Actually Good For the Brand?
Second Opinion is a regular series from Savvier, the AI platform for marketing teams. Each week we take something live in culture, run it through Savvier workflows, and share what might have been better.
01
The Situation
Range Rover · The new mark · First bespoke emblem in 55 years
The upcoming Range Rover Electric was shown in public for the first time this month, which reminded us of the (not amazingly received) logo designed to launch alongside it.
It’s the brand’s first bespoke emblem in more than 50 years, and the Internet had thoughts, as it always does. Creative Bloq called it “the branding disaster of the year,” while Motor1 went with “goofy as hell.” Elsewhere it got compared to a belt buckle, a jewellery house logo, and a five-year-old’s crayon drawing. Ouch.
FIG. 01 · The new mark · Source: Autocar
FIG. 02 · The same mark, tiled as a pattern · Source: Autocar
But hold on a moment, because it isn’t a primary logo at all. Range Rover told Autocar it was built as a smaller symbol for the places the wordmark won’t fit, things like labels, repeating patterns and event spaces. It’s a secondary mark, in other words. And now that the car it was made for has finally shown its face, it seemed like a good moment to go back and look at it properly.
Something else became clear once we started digging in: Range Rover shares its initials with Rolls-Royce, one of the most recognised luxury vehicle logos in the world, with its two overlapping Rs. So whatever came next had to stay well clear of that.
FIG. 03 · The Rolls-Royce badge · Two overlapping Rs, same orientation
Now given all of that, and being fair, does the new logo actually work? We ran it through Savvier to find out.
02
The Breakdown
Method · Two Savvier workflows
Savvier has 50+ workflows designed by leading marketing experts, and each one works a bit like a recipe for a specific marketing task. We ran three of them here. Visual Feedback, to work out whether the new mark does its job. Brand Visual Identity, to see what else a designer might have been handed to work from. And Simulated Focus Group, to find out how any of it landed with the people who actually buy these cars. Let’s begin.
01
Visual Feedback
The diagnosis
Visual Feedback takes a piece of work, holds it up against the brand’s own visual identity, and tells you where the gaps are. Ideally you run something like this before the work goes out rather than after. Had Range Rover done that, here’s what they would have been looking at. The assessment below comes from Savvier’s AI art director agent, in their own words.
Priority 01
The silhouette reads as B before it reads as RR
Take “The mark’s tall rectangular silhouette with three horizontal counters carries the visual grammar of a capital B, a locker panel, or an architectural facade. Two Rs is what it is. What the eye resolves first is a single letter with three windows. The mark relies on the viewer already knowing what they’re supposed to see, which reverses the correct order of operations for a mark that must operate independently of the wordmark.”
Reco “Reintroduce visual entry points that signal bilateral construction. A meaningful gap at the spine, a diagonal element, or asymmetric weighting between the top and bottom R. The goal isn’t to make the RR reading obvious. It’s to ensure a first-encounter viewer resolves ‘two letters’ before they resolve ‘one shape.’”
Priority 02
The pattern reads industrial, not luxury
Take “When tiled, the mark’s construction produces a geometric lattice with even spacing and uniform stroke weight throughout. That reads mechanical. Luxury repeat patterns succeed because they have a visible design beat: scale variation, deliberate spacing rhythm, tonal shift, or ornamental relief. The pattern is just the mark repeated, without the visual sophistication luxury surface graphics require.”
Reco “Test scale variation, tonal shifts (a deep field with the mark held back), or two-weight construction where the tiling introduces a second design element. The pattern should reward closer viewing, not just repeat.”
“Range Rover framed this as its first bespoke emblem in 55 years. That is a significant claim. The mark, as executed, doesn’t yet feel commensurate with that weight.”
Overall Assessment · Visual Feedback
02
Brand Visual Identity
Two alternative directions
Brand Visual Identity does the opposite job. Rather than assess work, it develops it. We pointed it at the same brief Range Rover was working to and ran it a few times, with an explicit instruction to keep well away from Rolls-Royce. Two directions kept coming back stronger than the rest.
The directions below are visual thought-starters produced by an AI workflow. They are not finished marks or trademark-ready proposals. They demonstrate what alternative directions could look like, and give a designer a specific brief to develop from. The craft of taking any direction to finished work belongs to a designer.
“Two ways out of the same corner. The first stops trying to be a monogram at all and lets a single R run into the landscape. The second keeps both Rs and fixes them at the drawing, so they read as two letters before they read as one shape.”
Key Insight · Brand Visual Identity
Direction 01 · Outward, Into Landscape
“The Meridian”
FIG. 04 · The Meridian · Generated via workflow image prompt
The workflow called this one “The Meridian,” after the horizontal line running out of it, which can be read as a horizon, a compass bearing, or a contour on a map. It’s a single R with a wave extending from its leg into the field, so the letter does the brand’s name and the line does the landscape. Range Rover’s founding claim, all-terrain and horizon-reaching, ends up sitting inside the mark itself.
Why it answers the brief. There’s no monogram here at all, so Rolls-Royce never enters the conversation. What makes it distinctive is the little wave running off the leg of the R, which reads like a horizon, or the roll of hills seen from a distance, and that is the ground Range Rover has spent 55 years claiming. It also survives being tiled, because the line gives the eye a rhythm to follow rather than a lattice to fight through.
“Where every other automotive monogram terminates, this one continues, settling into the landscape rather than lifting away from it.”
Direction 02 · Inward, Into Craft
“The Solihull Hallmark”
FIG. 05 · The Solihull Hallmark · Generated via workflow image prompt
The second one it called “The Solihull Hallmark,” after Range Rover’s home in the West Midlands and the maker’s-mark register it borrows from.
Further exploration
Those two are the ones we thought best answered the brief, but they weren’t the only things that came out of it. Here are six more from the same exploration, several of them reaching for a bit of energy around the brand’s first electric launch.
FIG. 06 · Octagonal seal · Brass, leather, deboss
FIG. 07 · Minimal R · Label system
FIG. 08 · Charge mark · Colour system
FIG. 09 · Charge mark · Range Rover Electric
FIG. 10 · Charge mark · Bold system
FIG. 11 · Gradient R · Event scale
03
Simulated Focus Group
The reaction
Simulated Focus Group builds personas out of a brand’s real buyer profile and then runs the work past them. We put every concept above in front of three of them, and they are designed to respond in the first person with their thoughts on the work, just like real people. They are simulations, however, not real customers, so nobody should mistake this for research. What it does give you is an inexpensive way to pressure-test an assumption before you commit real money to it.
Edward, 58 · Fourth Range Rover
Went with the Hallmark and the Seal
“The Solihull Hallmark and the Seal, those I understand immediately. The foil-stamping on leather, the debossed metal detail, these feel like they belong to the same sensibility as the vehicle. But then you show me that lime green thing with the plus sign, and I genuinely wonder if it’s meant for a different car. You don’t announce that you’ve gone electric any more than you announce that you’ve upgraded your tailor.”
Isabelle, 44 · Design director
Went with the Meridian
“The Meridian is the one I keep returning to. The horizon wave extending from the leg of the R, that’s form carrying meaning without labelling it. The mark does something. The gradient R, I’m sorry, that’s digital thinking applied to something that needs to live in brushed metal and stitched leather simultaneously. And the plus sign embedded in the R, someone left the brief in the final file.”
Marcus, 38 · Pre-ordered the Electric
Went with the Meridian
“The Meridian works because it doesn’t say electric. It doesn’t say anything. It just sits there, clean, and earns its place on the sill plate by being formally correct. The Charge Mark is exactly the wrong move. It’s telling me something I already know, which means the brand doesn’t trust me. And the gradient R borrows visual language I’ve seen on three EV startups in the last eighteen months. Range Rover didn’t invent the category by borrowing anything.”
“Every persona penalised explicit messaging, not heritage or EV positioning itself. The marks that lost trust were the ones that explained what they should have embodied.”
Key Finding · Simulated Focus Group
The Meridian came out on top. Isabelle and Marcus both landed on it for much the same reason, which was that it doesn’t announce anything, while Edward held out for the Hallmark and the Seal because he wants a mark that shows the brand remembering where it came from.
They did all agree on one thing though. The charge mark and the gradient, the two we were least sure about ourselves, got taken apart by everyone, less for being electric than for announcing it.
03
The Takeaway
The job
A secondary mark has a small and specific job. It has to hold up small, hold up repeated, and sit happily beside a wordmark it was never trying to replace. Most of the commentary judged this one as a logo, which is a different job with different rules, and that probably accounts for some of the roughness of the reaction.
The surprise
The most interesting thing to come out of this wasn’t the winner. It was what all three buyers landed on without being asked, which is that the marks explaining themselves were the ones they trusted least. Worth remembering the next time a brief asks a logo to say something out loud.
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