It will soon be 100 years since the official registration of the Skoda trademark. The iconic logo was first registered by the company of the same name from Pilsen, and it only became the symbol of the car company less than two years later. Most surprising is the original inspiration for the design.
The Czech car manufacturer Škoda Auto is celebrating an important jubilee today. One hundred years ago, more specifically on December 15, 1923, the iconic logo was officially trademarked. The legendary flying arrow with three feathers symbolized speed and progress, but it was not the car company itself that officially registered the famous emblem that day. And perhaps the most surprising interesting thing is that the inspiration for the logo was only minimally connected with Czechoslovakia.
On December 15, 1923, the company of the same name, which was the joint-stock company Škodovy závody v Pilsen, registered the patent mark for the emblem of today’s car company. Along with the final design with three pens, the Pilsen company also registered an alternative variant with five pens and an integrated Škoda inscription. It was the result of more than a year’s search for a new trademark, initiated by a public tender.
Around 300 designs were submitted to the public competition at the time, and the winning one has an inspiration that you will probably never see at first glance. The prototype for the later iconic Škoda logo was the head of an Indian chief with a feather headdress. The name of the author of the proposal will probably remain shrouded in mystery forever, and it is possible that the emblem is a collective work, gradually modified by different workplaces of the company.
The reduction from five pens to three was related to the idea that the new trademark would appear on a wide range of different products and would have to be distinct even after a significant reduction even in a three-dimensional pressing or casting. For these reasons, the supplementary word mark Škoda was finally withdrawn.
The new designation began to appear on cars from Mladá Boleslav less than two years later, after the Laurin & Klement car company was incorporated into the Škoda engineering concern. The most popular green variant came into use in 1992, when the automaker replaced the original blue color with green to symbolize ecology. The new emblem first appeared on the modern Felicia, and the laurels at the bottom symbolized the brand’s sporting tradition.
In 2011, the car company introduced a modernized version of the logo with a chrome strip. In that year, the automaker launched the action model Fabia Monte Carlo, celebrating the 110th anniversary of the brand’s successful engagement in motorsport, as well as the Škoda Vision D concept, heralding the launch of the modern production Škoda Rapid.
The Mladá Boleslav carmaker presented its newest logo in the summer of 2022, when the company’s main communication tool became the modern Škoda sign with an integrated typical hook in the opening letter “eš”. The typical winged arrow symbol has undergone a less fundamental change, which is newly rendered as two-dimensional – optically flat – and is more practical for more expressive work with colors.
2023-12-12 17:50:00
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