Infiniti Reveals New 3D Badge, Signature Scent And Sound To Refresh Image

Infiniti announced today it’s updating the brand’s identity. The luxury automaker has introduced a refreshed logo and badge alongside a new retail experience.

The new Infiniti logo isn’t a radical departure from the current mark, and the changes are minor. The logo, its fourth iteration since the company’s 1989 inception, represents an infinite road fading across the horizon, and the updated emblem further emphasizes that intent. The bottom opening is wider, narrowing the outline of the road, which no longer ends at a point, putting greater focus on the horizon.

The automaker also increased the spacing of the word mark below the emblem, which it says “visually accentuates the horizon.” The company will update the logo on its cars with a new three-dimensional and illuminated emblem, with the road flowing over the horizon and into the grille.

Infiniti is the latest automaker to recently update its branding, although it’s not as extreme as others. So far this year, Jaguar Land Rover and Porsche have updated their logos, joining BMW, General Motors, Lotus, and many others that have given their old badges a fresh coat of paint as automakers ready for the industry’s electrified era. Companies big and small are focusing on their image and customer connections.

The company’s new markings will adorn a refreshed retail experience as it reaffirms its commitment to physical retail spaces in a world itching for more online sales. It has a striking architecture that takes inspiration from Japanese design philosophies. The new spaces will open starting this month, with locations in downtown Los Angeles; Georgetown, Texas; Monterrey, Mexico; and Doha, Qatar, being among the first to feature the new retail design.

Visitors to special brand events or retail showrooms might experience the company’s new scent. Infiniti infused it with Japanese cypress (hinoki), cedar (sugi), and citrus (yuzu) wood, designed to evoke the smell a forest. The company also created a unique sound logo, which it will use in commercials, promotional materials, company videos, and as optional hold music at retailers. The sound scape combines the sound of a taiko drum, a Japanese wind chime (furin), and the human voice.

The automaker isn’t alone in this aspect, either, with Maserati introducing a new global store concept last September in Milan, Italy. The Italian automaker wanted to bridge the gap between its offline and online sales experiences, bringing its Fuoriserie customization program and other services closer to customers.

Infiniti didn’t say when we would begin seeing the new emblem on its vehicles. It’ll arrive on future models, possibly on something like the next-generation QX80 that our spy photographers recently captured testing in Michigan. There are also rumors that the company will add a new two-row crossover to its portfolio by 2025 that could receive the 3D badge.

The company will need more than a new logo and retail space to reverse its drastic sales slide. Infiniti ended 2022 with sales down just over 20 percent to over 46,000 units. That’s less than a third of the number of cars the company sold in 2017.