Inter Milan’s 2021 new logo is on the wild!

The long-announced and long-awaited Inter Milan 2021 logo and new brand identity have finally been unveiled. Without much noise, el Inter, l’Internazionale, FC Internazionale Milano or just Internazionale Milano has presented its new logo

Inter Milan new 2021 logo was a troublesome process

First of all, let’s start by taking a look to the logo to be replaced. And when I say “to be” is because part of teh Inter Milano organization still doesn’t know it! Keep reading to know more.

The Inter Milan logo was announced back in late 2020, and versions of it were even circulating. These supposedly leaked versions of the logo were portrayed as genuine by branding sites without proper investigation. And it was very common to see this image “leaked” on groups and design forums. The new “leaked” logo can be traced back to a Mexican newspaper, although we don’t know if they obtained it from another source or created it themselves.

Anyway, now that the real logo has been revealed, we can see that the leaked logo is not that different from the new official Inter Milan logo. Which probably indicates that there was a leak and that the design agency only made minimal changes.

Inter Milan Logo History

Internazionale had 12 different logos through its long history, with the new one being the number 13 in the list. The first logo, dating from the club’s foundation in 1908 was created by Giorgio Muggiani, an illustrator, publicist and one of the club founders. He also chose the “Nerazzurri” colors (black and blue). With different changes, the original logo from 1908 guided all other logo’s asthetics. There were only 3 logos that went away from the original

• The 1929-1931 which changed the club name to Ambrosiana
• The 1939-1945 one, which still kept the Ambrosiana name (although including Inter as well) and a foot ball inside a rhombus
• The 1961-1963 Milan logo, the first oen to include “il biscione” (the grass snake), one of the nicknames for FC Internazionale. Personally, I think the ones with “il biscione” were always the best ones. And this feeling is shared by most of Inter’s supporters
• The 1978-1988 variations of the same logo, all of them including the biscione

The Inter Milan 2021 logo design

The logo design was done by the German design studio Bureau Borsche based in the city of Munich. The logo process took at least a year, but maybe a bit longer.

Conceptually, the logo is simplified, as has been the trend in recent years. But this simplification goes far beyond a simple application of minimalism. On the contrary, it implies a new brand identity accompanied by a rebranding strategy.

To explain it better: Inter abandons its old name “FC Internazionale Milan” to be simply “Inter Milan”. This move has many reasons, both from a marketing as from a brand image point of view. It also has a much more practical reason: The traditional Italian club has Chinese owners, the Suning Group. And its manager Steven Zhang has repeatedly expressed a desire to make the club more modern and international (no pun intended), rather than limiting it to Italy.

For this reason, the new logo is getting rid of the F and C, which have always been part of its logo, to use only the letters I and M, integrated in a circle.

The ‘I M’ was included in Giorgio Muggiani’s original design, and it still keeps the concentric circles. Inter said that the new 2021 design has a “90% similarity to the club’s very first crest”, only that the new logo version is better suited for digital screens.

Brand Identity: Going beyond the new logo

Of course, when creating a rebranding strategy, the logo is only one of the parts that make up the strategy. And in this case, it’s not the exception.

The Club’s new visual identity has many influences: fashion, design, entertainment, music. Our passion in everyday life becomes a flag to fly with pride.

IM Campaign Launch

The letters I and M that make up the logo are used as part of a series of slogans in which they use both letters in their meaning in English to say “I am” (or I’m). This decision already clearly speaks to the intention of the campaign and the use of Universal UX techniques.For example, on the page dedicated to the launch of the campaign we can see:

• I M Evolution
• I M Attitude
• I M Collection

Although in my humble opinion this strategy is not very creative and doesn’t really say much (I’m speechless at I’M Collection), the point is that the strategy is on clear and defined tracks.

On the one hand, the strategy is inclusive, as the campaign includes football-playing women, African Americans and people of Asian ethnicity. While it’s a bit cliché, we’re not going to complain about a brand strategy being inclusive because that’s part of our credo.

However, there are two very unique facts: The campaign has a large number of Asians (which has to do with Steven Zhang ‘s plans to sell merchandising in China), but it forgets something fundamental: the Italians. To the real fans, the Tifossi.

We’ll see how it works out, but we already suspect there will be a lot of complaints.

Brand and logo application

As seems to be the custom lately, the launch of new brand images rarely coincides with the updating of the communication channels of said brand, specifically the websites and mobile applications.

And in this case it is not the exception.

To be a movement destined to the sale of merchandising, it is quite striking that the merchandising has the old logo. Furthermore, the new logo is presented on a site that uses the previous brand image as its logo.

In my opinion, very sloppy and lacking in professionalism. Inter Milan has sufficient resources to have a capable marketing team capable of maintaining a website. Hopefully it’s just the thrill of the launch, because it really leaves a lot to be desired.

As I mentioned earlier, the launch has a dedicated page. It has very serious accessibility problems and it literally looks like a page that has nothing to do with the rest of the site, as if it had been “pasted” onto the site overnight. Their interaction and user experience is not the best. But again: it might just be a quick development to present the logo, so we will have to wait.

Conclusion: a “meh” logo.

This brand identity for Inter Milan is very particular from its conception. From the logo that was leaked to the economic reasons of an owner who does not even have the same nationality as a club that always prided itself as a nationalist, we can say that everything is, to say the least, strange.

Presenting in a hurry, without paying attention to even the smallest details, really does not help much to avoid the aforementioned impression.

His marketing strategy aimed at China will likely see some opposition from longtime loyal fans.

When it comes to the logo, it’s nothing special. The fact of the leak may have affected the final product that was presented a bit, but even then it is a logo with little pregnancy and that is lost in a sea of almost identical logos.

In short: This is the first time we have said on this site that this brand image is not good. Not bad either. Just “meh”

Ariel Gaster

Ariel is a Bachelor in Computer Sciences and writer for technology related sites. He lived in Nicaragua, Mexico, Spain, France, Ireland and Argentina. Ariel is a big fan of sports, specially football. And he swears PHP is not going anywhere!