How Often Do Brands Change Logos? Redesign Data From 26 Brands

How often do brands change logos? The short answer

Less often than the headlines suggest. In a sample of 26 well-known brands, 18 global and 8 Canadian, the median gap between one documented logo and the next was 13 years between 1950 and October 2026. The mean was about 18 years, pulled upward by a handful of marks that stayed in place for half a century.

Counted another way, the 26 brands made 55 major changes in seventy-six years, or about two each. Nine brands have only one documented logo year in the window. That does not mean they sat still otherwise. It means a company page or a major news outlet confirmed only one redesign, and the dataset leaves the rest out rather than guessing.

So the honest answer to how often do brands change logos is a range. Fast movers redraw their mark every five to seven years. Slow ones, mostly banks, railways and carmakers, keep a symbol for a generation. For a typical case, the answer to how often do brands change logos is roughly once every decade and a half.

The redesign data: 26 brands, 1950 to 2026

The redesign data covers every documented major change to each brand’s primary mark: a new symbol, a new wordmark or a new colour system. Small refinements, like a thinner stroke or a gloss effect removed, are excluded unless the company itself announced a new logo. The chart above shows each brand as a row, with a dot for every change.

To measure how often do brands change logos, a brand needs at least two logos inside the window. Seventeen do, and their average gap is about 20 years, with a median near 18. Pool every gap between consecutive logos, 31 of them, and the shortest is two years while the longest is fifty-seven.

That two-year gap is Twitter, which introduced its first bird in 2010 and replaced it in 2012. The fifty-seven-year gap is General Motors, whose 2021 lowercase logo ended a run that began in 1964. Between those extremes sits most of the sample, and most of the interesting decisions about when a mark has simply worn out.

Fast changers and the five-year redesign cycle

Google and Instagram turned over fastest, each about every five years in this window. Google refreshed its wordmark in 2010 and replaced it in 2015 with a new sans-serif logo and a four-colour G. Instagram swapped its classic camera icon of 2011 for a flat gradient in 2016, once the app had outgrown its original look.

Twitter, now X, managed three marks in thirteen years: the first bird in 2010, a streamlined bird without lettering in 2012, and the X in July 2023. CBC/Radio-Canada was the fastest-moving older brand, with five changes between 1958 and 1992; the Canadian Tire logo history shows a similar pace across the same decades.

One aside: fast change is not always forward motion. Burger King’s 2021 logo was modelled on its own 1969 design, and Pepsi’s 2023 mark put an uppercase wordmark back inside the globe, much as older versions had done. A redesign can be a return, and two of the most recent ones in this dataset were exactly that.

The slow ones: marks that last half a century

At the other end are marks that barely move. The CN logo, a single continuous line drawn by Allan Fleming and unveiled in 1960, is still in use, making it the longest-standing mark in the sample. IBM’s striped wordmark by Paul Rand has not changed since 1972, after an earlier Rand redraw of the letters in 1956.

Several single-change brands carry long gaps in their own announcements. Nokia’s 2023 wordmark was described as its first identity change in nearly sixty years. Gap said the blue box it briefly replaced in 2010 had been in use for more than twenty years, and then went back to it within a week, a reversal no other brand matched.

Carmakers lean slow as well. BMW’s 2020 flat roundel followed a 1997 shaded version, Volkswagen flattened its badge in 2019, and Kia replaced its oval in 2021. BMW and Volkswagen both moved to flat, two-dimensional versions of their roundels, keeping the familiar shapes. Jaguar’s 2024 wordmark and redrawn leaper are the sharp exception.

How often do brands change logos in Canada?

The eight Canadian brands in the sample averaged about 2.75 major changes each, against roughly 1.8 for the global brands. CBC/Radio-Canada and Canadian Tire logged five apiece. Air Canada recorded four identity eras, starting with the rondelle chosen in 1964 and flown from January 1965, and then updated in 1993, 2004 and 2017.

The banks split. RBC changed its mark in 1962, 1974 and 2001, the last time with brighter colours under the RBC Financial Group name. TD’s shield dates from a new corporate identity in 1969. Hudson’s Bay used a stylised B from 1965 and restored its full name with a redrawn coat of arms in 2013.

CN and Petro-Canada each have a single documented change. For Petro-Canada it is the new logo shown on a retail site in the company’s 1980 annual report. You can follow the national pattern in more detail on the logos hub, and the Air Canada logo history covers the rondelle’s four eras.

Which decades saw the most logo changes

Ask how often do brands change logos decade by decade and the 2010s lead the count with 15 changes, then the 1960s with 11 and the unfinished 2020s with 9. The 1950s, 1970s and 2000s are quiet by comparison, with three or four each. Read that with care: recent changes are far better documented than older ones.

The 1960s spike is real, though. Six of the eight Canadian brands adopted new marks then, the decade that brought Canada a new flag in 1965. The 2010s spike is driven by apps and tech companies, plus a wave of flat redesigns that also shows up in the brand colours by decade report.

How the redesign data was compiled

The dataset covers 26 brands and 55 major logo changes from January 1950 to October 2026. A change counts only when a company history page or a major news outlet states the year, so every count is a floor. Founding marks, Starbucks in 1971 and Instagram in 2011, start a brand’s timeline but are not counted as changes.

Each brand’s interval is the span between its first and last logo in the window divided by the number of gaps. Two years are derived from statements: Microsoft’s 1987 change, from its 2012 note that the logo had gone 25 years without an update, and Xerox’s 1994 mark, reported as fourteen years old in 2008.