Did Pringles Change Its Logo? A Before-and-After Evaluation
Yes. Pringles redesigned its logo in 2020, flattening Julius Pringles and the wordmark. Here is what changed and what it means for vector artwork.
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Did Pringles change its logo?
Yes. Pringles introduced a redesigned logo in 2020, the first full identity overhaul in more than a decade. The current official mark is the post-2020 Julius Pringles lockup with a simplified mascot and a new custom wordmark. Older files still circulating online are usually the glossier late-2000s version, not the live brand identity.
The asset under discussion is the Pringles brand lockup: the Julius Pringles portrait (the moustached mascot) combined with the Pringles wordmark, typically on red. That lockup is a trademarked brand identity, not a generic snack icon. A raster preview, a packaged-goods photo, and a true vector master of the same lockup are different files even when they look similar at small size.
Before and after
The version most people remember from the 2010s is the 2009-era refresh. Julius was rendered with volume, highlights, and a more illustrated face. Hair had visible strands and sheen. The bow tie read as a tied object with light and shadow. The wordmark was playful and dimensional. On packaging and in many downloads, that mark was often a flattened picture of a 3D-style illustration rather than a simple set of flat color shapes.
The 2020 redesign, produced for the brand by Jones Knowles Ritchie, rebuilt Julius as a graphic construction. Hair became cleaner interlocking shapes. Facial features were reduced and aligned. The bow tie was simplified into a geometric form. The wordmark moved to a custom bold sans-serif, tighter and more regular than the older lettering. Color blocking is flatter. The result is built to hold up as a small app icon, a large billboard, and a single-color reproduction, which is the practical reason the geometry changed.
| Element | Pre-2020 identity (widely the 2009 mark) | Current identity (2020 redesign) |
| Julius Pringles | Illustrated, highlighted, more volumetric head and hair | Flatter, geometric portrait with simplified hair and features |
| Bow tie | Detailed, shaded knot | Reduced geometric tie |
| Wordmark | Playful, more dimensional lettering | Custom bold sans-serif lockup |
| Surface treatment | Gloss, bevel, and soft shading common in files and print | Flat fills and graphic color blocking |
| Reproduction | Often circulated as photos or rasterized art of a 3D-style drawing | Drawn as shape-based artwork that can exist as true vector paths |
| Typical mix-up | Still appears in old templates, clip-art packs, and image search | The version that matches current packaging and brand use |
No later full logo replacement on the scale of 2020 is documented in the material available for this assessment. Treat the 2020 lockup as the current identity unless an official brand master issued after that date is in hand. Ownership of the brand moved with the snacks business to Kellanova after the 2023 Kellogg split; that change of corporate owner is not by itself a new logo.
What this means if you need vector artwork
The redesign is easier to express as real vector artwork because it is made of discrete shapes and flat color, not of highlights, photographic grain, or a painted head. That does not mean a given file is editable vector. An .svg, .eps, or .ai download can still be a raster image of Julius placed on a page, a traced bitmap with thousands of noisy points, or a mix of live type, outlined type, and embedded pictures. The filename and extension do not prove that the portrait is a clean path construction you can recolor, scale, or separate by layer.
- Vector artwork is a set of paths, fills, and (sometimes) live type that redraws at any size.
- A raster preview is a pixel image of the logo, including PNG, JPEG, and screenshots of packaging.
- Embedded raster inside a vector wrapper is a picture sitting in an Illustrator, EPS, or SVG file. Scaling it still pixelates the mascot.
- Auto-trace of a photo of a can is neither the official drawing nor a reliable path structure for print or animation.
For anyone preparing or evaluating a file, inspect the actual objects: whether Julius is separate filled shapes, whether the wordmark is outlined or still font-dependent, whether red is a spot or process fill, and whether any glow, mesh, or pixel layer is carrying the likeness. If those objects are not present, you have a picture of the logo, not production artwork.
Which version to use, and what you are allowed to do with it
Use the post-2020 lockup when the job is current packaging, retail, digital, or anything meant to match product on shelf today. Use a clearly labelled archival 2009-era mark only when the brief is historical reconstruction. Mixing the old glossy Julius with the new wordmark, or the new Julius with old lettering, produces a hybrid that is not the brand identity.
Permission to download a logo file is not permission to modify it, recolor it, combine it with other marks, or use the mascot, wordmark, or trade dress. Pringles, Julius Pringles, and the associated design are protected brand assets. Fonts used in official artwork may be custom or licensed separately from the logo drawing. A vendor pack, a wiki-style SVG, or an icon set can be useful as a visual reference and still be the wrong master, the wrong vintage, and the wrong license for production.
Official master artwork and usage rules were not supplied for this evaluation, so editability, color values, clear-space, and licensed use cannot be confirmed from a file name, a search result, or a packaging photo. When the work is commercial or public-facing, request current vector masters and brand rules from the rights holder or an authorized licensor, then check that the supplied file contains paths for both the mascot and the wordmark rather than a placed image of the can.