When car brands change up their logo, you are either excited about the new change or mourn the loss of the old one.

But it is never as confusing as it was when the Kia car brand changed its logo to something people started to read KN.

What is a KN car?

This took place in the January of the year 2021 when the Kia brand logo, which was created in 1994, changed into something more meaningful and stylish.

Were you confused?

And were you one of the 30,000 people who Googled the KN car brand just to understand what the story was underneath it all?

Well, today, I will tell you exactly what happened there and also why it happened.

What Is the KN Car Brand?

kia logo

Before you get your answer to what the KN car brand really is, you should know a little more about the Kia car brand.

Since the year 1940, the Kia car brand has been around but was owned by Hyundai Motor Group, the South Korean auto giant.

In early 2000, the Kia brand became widely popular. And the collective sales of both Hyundai and Kia cars increased by 61 percent in 2010.

That’s not all!

Just last year, the Kia brand even sold about 1.5 million cars right in the United States. And that’s why they decided to change up the logo to KN car brand to give it a more trendy look.

This logo was designed to take into account the rich history of the Kia car brand and to add meaningfulness to the logo.

Thus the logo change!

So the KN car logo is just a new branding of the Kia car brand. And you might wonder what else might have changed for the new branding objective.

Nothing else!

The only thing that the Kia car brand changed was its logo, from Kia to Kn! And this change in the logo is what created such confusion among the fans of this brand.

The thing is that the old logo of this brand was just “KIA.” It was easy to spell, easy to read, and even easy to understand.

You could easily relate the logo to the brand because the name of the brand and the logo used to be spelled the same.

Here’s the thing!

With the old logo, there wasn’t much left to be desired. It was way too simple! I mean, it worked for the brand for a long time.

But it wasn’t enough!

The brand felt like it needed a huge change after so long of using the same branding. So it switched to a more elegant and modern-looking logo design.

And the decision was made to change the KIA logo to the KN logo, which took the internet by storm, to say the least.

Confusion and Refusal of the KN Car Logo

The new branding of the Kia car brand, changing the former KIA logo to the new and more stylish KN car logo, created a lot of confusion.

That’s right!

It picked up so much steam on the internet that about 30,000 people went over to Google and searched for the KN car brand each month after the new logo came out.

But when the confusion subsided, some of the fans were in support of this new logo. However, not everyone felt the same way.

A Twitter thread got blown out of proportion, saying the new logo is unrelatable. 

Guess what?

This worked for the brand! This is because they got the attention of people and became more popular after changing the logo.

Conclusion

Even though the changing of the Kia car brand logo to the KN car logo was not received warmly by the fans, it worked well for the brand to gain more popularity. What do you think? Was this change a good decision?