Product Name: Kia Corporate Visual Identity System(2021 rebrand)
Brand: Kia
Category: Corporate visual identity — logo, graphicsystem, and applications
Manufacturer: Kia Corporation (brand owner / client);identity produced by Innocean Berlin, Kia Design Center, and Blackspace
Designer: Logo by Luc Donckerwolke (Kia Chief DesignOfficer) with Blackspace; graphic system by Innocean Berlin (Bruno Oppido, Headof Art) and Kia Design Center; guidelines documentation by Interbrand
Identification Confidence: High— corroborated by Innocean Berlin's own case study, Behance projectdocumentation, and multiple independent design-press sources.
A single graphic device,extracted directly from the logo's own geometry, doing the work of framing,cropping, and animating photography across every format it touches.
Kia's rebranded identity isorganized around one confirmed structural idea: the logo's own diagonal, risingstrokes are extracted and reused as a functional graphic device across theentire system, rather than staying confined to the mark itself. On theguidelines cover, that diagonal is a quiet line. On an outdoor billboard, thesame line becomes a triangular reveal that frames a moving car within anotherwise dimmed photograph, literally visualizing the brand's 'movement thatinspires' positioning. On a business card, it survives as a barely-there foldat the top edge, restrained enough for stationery. In a print brochure, itreappears as an architectural echo, aligning with a real staircase in thephotographed environment. This is a rare case of a rebrand's central metaphorbeing applied consistently and functionally, not just repeated decoratively,across genuinely different media. Combined with a disciplined black-and-whitebase palette, occasional spot colour, and a clean, minimal typeface, the systemreads as confident and mature across every touchpoint reviewed. It certifies inthe A class.
Vand Score 89 / 100
Performance across the five core Vand assessment dimensions.
This identity demonstrates thata logo's own geometry can be mined for a functional graphic system, not just adecorative one — the diagonal 'rising line' motif does real compositional work(framing, revealing, directing focus) rather than simply recurring as a brandwatermark.
It also shows that a singlegraphic idea can flex dramatically in intensity — from a barely-visible fold ona business card to a dramatic light/dark reveal on a billboard — whileremaining recognizably the same underlying system, which is a difficult rangefor any identity to cover convincingly.
Most instructively, the brochureapplication shows that a strong enough graphic motif can find real alignmentwith photographed reality itself — the diagonal doesn't just sit on top of theimage, it echoes an actual line in the photographed architecture, blurringwhere the brand system ends and the world it's describing begins.
The evidence supportscertification at Class A. Reviewed across a guidelines cover, business cards,an outdoor billboard, and a print brochure, Kia's rebranded identitydemonstrates something genuinely difficult to achieve: one graphic idea,extracted directly from the logo's own geometry, that performs realcompositional work in every format it touches rather than simply recurring as awatermark. The billboard application in particular shows the system at its mostconfident, turning an abstract brand concept into a literal, effective devicefor directing attention. What keeps the assessment just short of the highestscores is that this functional intensity is not evenly distributed — the samemotif does far more visible work at billboard scale than it does on a businesscard or document cover. As a closing observation: this is a rebrand that foundone true idea in its own logo and had the discipline to let that idea do realwork everywhere it went, rather than asking it to simply be present.
