The development and meaning of the Nissan logo

Nissan is a Japanese listed vehicle manufacturer. With just under 139.000 employees in 2019, the corporation is the third largest Japanese automobile manufacturer in terms of market value. The company and its brand have a long history.

What does the logo of Nissan?

The development of vehicles and thus the first logo has its origins in 1914. The three Japanese company partners Kenjiro Den, Rokuro Aoyama and Meitaro Takeuchi from “Kaishinisha Jidosha Kojo” built a car called “DAT”. The name of the car was an abbreviation of the last names of the three company owners. Through his friendship with one of the founders of the Japanese automobile industry, Mr. Masujiro Hashimoto, the company was restructured several times and in 1925 it became the limited partnership GK DAT Jido Shokai. The focus on military vehicles is causing mergers with other automobile manufacturers due to falling demand. A merger resulted in “DAT Jidosha Seizo” based in Osaka, Japan, and finally “DAT Automobile Manufacturing Co., Limited”. Production became more variable, so that three-wheeled vehicles were part of the portfolio as well as four-wheeled models and trucks.

With the Japanese government's decree in 1930, driving vehicles with engines up to 500 cm³ was permitted without a license. The company “DAT Jidosha Seizo” started with a series of cars under the project name “Sohn vom DAT” (English: “the son of the DAT”). DAT production focused on larger and higher quality vehicles until 1930. With the name “son”, which also means “disadvantage” and “loss” in Japanese, the first sales of a car for the middle class became clear. The “Datson 10” model, a smaller car with a 495 cc engine, was sold on the automobile market.
The factory where the “Datson 10” was manufactured was destroyed by a devastating hurricane. As a result, the factory for the production of the Datson was rebuilt. This name was eventually changed to “Datsun”. The renaming was an allusion to the English word “sun” (German: “Sonne”), as well as to Japan as the “Land of the Rising Sun”. With the following model “Datsun 11” the name “Datsun” was used in the company name for the first time. “Tobata Casting”, a supplier to “DAT”, took over “DAT Automobile Manufacturing Co., Ltd” in 1931.

In 1928 a company holding company “Nihon Sangyo” was created. This company was listed on the Japanese stock exchange with the symbol “Nissan" guided. The owner, Yoshisuke Aikawa, was also the owner of “Tobata Casting”. The two companies merged in 1933 under the name “Jidosha Seizo Co, Ltd.”. The literal translation as “automobile manufacturer” was chosen to fit the vision of producing vehicles for the mass market in the future.
In June 1934 Aikawa became company president and the company operated under its current name Nissan Motor Co., Limited.

The name and therefore the logo resulted from the “Ni” from “Nihon” and from “ssan”, which has its meaning in “sangyo”. “Nihon Sangyo” means “Japanese Industry”.
With mass appeal and export, a recognizable logo became necessary. “Datsun”. The historical announcement was made in the logo with the help of a red circle. The logo implied the Japanese symbol of the rising sun. With the white letters of the company name on a blue, rectangular background in front of the red circle, the global awareness of the brand increased. The company's designers experimented with colors and fonts, but it wasn't until 1984 that “Datsun” was replaced by Nissan in the logo. This development came with the discontinuation of the “Datsun” brand. The name of the company “Nissan” was to be strengthened, so that the models were successively renamed from Datsun to Nissan. The name change spanned a period of approximately three years until 1984. The reason for the name change was the global strategy and the simplification of advertising, campaigns and a uniform product design.

In order to reflect the zeitgeist, a more elegant and modern logo version was created in 1988. The color blue was replaced with gray and the red circle changed to silver. With the partnership alliance with Renault in 1999, there were no changes in the brand's independence that were relevant to the logo. Nissan remained in the market as a global brand. In 2012, the logo was supplemented with the slogan “Innovation that inspires”, and the logo itself was modified with light shades of gray and silver.
The logo has retained the basic features of the circle with the central lettering of the brand or company name as characteristics throughout the history and has been continuously adapted to the spirit of the times with the help of modern colors and different designs, for example in three dimensions.

The “Datsun” brand was reintroduced in 2014 as an affordable car brand in emerging countries such as India, South Africa and Indonesia.

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