McLaren Just Redesigned Its 60-Year Legacy
Pixenium Team4 Oct 2026Branding
CREDIT: MCLAREN
CREDIT: MCLARENWhat Pixenium Thinks
What stands out to us is that McLaren has tried to make the brand more expressive. The decision to draw from its racing heritage is closely connected to the brand purpose, giving people a way to connect with performance at every level. It also shows why a strong brand system needs to evolve with the product. McLaren has grown far beyond the racing team it was when the previous identity was introduced. The biggest lesson for designers is that sometimes you can take something people already recognise and change the details that give it personality. McLaren is still McLaren. It just feels a little more like the precision engineering community it represents.
McLaren started with a simple problem: pushing the boundaries of automotive performance.
Today, the brand does much more. It is expanding into luxury lifestyle, esports, and sustainable automotive engineering, making the idea of a McLaren feel much bigger than it once did.
Its new identity is built around making space. And instead of representing speed with simple italics, the new design tries to show what precision engineering can create.
The brand has not changed completely. It is a refinement, which is exactly what a good redesign should be.
The wordmark has become more structured, the wider system has been updated, and the design has more room to reflect the engineering philosophy happening across the brand.
