BlaBlaCar Logo PNG
The service stays in touch and helps connect two travelers: the driver and the passenger. The BlaBlaCar logo reflects the site’s different pricing policy so that everyone can find a travel companion within their budget.
BlaBlaCar is a private online platform for finding travel companions. It connects potential passengers with drivers on a specific route and compensates them for the trip cost, sharing it proportionally among all participants. To support this, the service offers a website and mobile applications. It does not own a fleet of vehicles; it is a broker with an 18- 21% booking fee. The service operates in 22 countries, mostly in Europe and Latin America. Its headquarters is in Paris, the capital of France. The site’s founders are Frédéric Mazzella, Francis Nappez, and Nicolas Brusson. Its founding date is 2006.
Vincent Caron, a Frenchman, first registered the domain name Covoiturage.fr and then founded a company under the same name. This happened in 2004. In 2006, he sold the website to Frédéric Mazzella, who built the company Comuto around it. It owned a vehicle depot.
Two years later, the transportation service launched another Internet service related to social aspects. Users could find recommendations, biographies, reviews, and profiles. Covoiturage.fr was both a travel site, a recommendation web resource, and a community platform. By the end of 2008, it had become France’s number-one car-sharing provider.
The service became more pervasive year by year and gradually expanded to cover more European countries. In 2012, BlaBlaCar launched a booking service: potential passengers pay for their trips online, and the platform transfers a portion of the fare to drivers. This business model motivates transport owners to cooperate. The group now has 100 million members.
Meaning and History
The service gets its name from a rating scale that describes a ride with a particular driver by how chatty they are. One “Bla” is for the not talkative, “BlaBla” is for people of average talkativeness, and for those who like to talk, “BlaBlaBla” characterizes the most talkative, those who are not able to be quiet at all. And “Car,” appropriately, refers to the car. Since its inception, the site has had two logos. Its history dates back to the ride-sharing service’s original name.
What is BlaBlaCar?
BlaBlaCar is a popular online platform and app for long-distance ridesharing. It connects 60 million drivers across 22 countries and helps match people traveling in the same direction to offset travel costs. Participants split the payment among themselves. Group members also indicate their chatter level so that fellow travelers feel as comfortable as possible on the road. The service was launched in 2006. Its founder is Frédéric Mazzella. The head office is in Paris (France).
2004 – 2006
In 2004, the precursor to the French online platform BlaBlaCar, called Covoiturage.fr, was launched. Its banner was a green horizontal rectangle with rounded corners, which served as the basis for the purple domain name, written in italics. Below the name was an image of a car, its driver, and two potential passengers standing next to it. The emblem had a gradient effect, giving it a three-dimensional appearance.
2006 – 2008
In 2006, French entrepreneur and BlaBlaCar founder Frédéric Mazzella purchased the Covoiturage.fr domain name. The logo for this period featured the website’s name in blue letters with a gradient effect. The first “C” was uppercase and leaned to the right, while the other glyphs were directed towards the left, with the “o” after the “C” shifted downwards.
2008 – 2011
In 2008, a new version of the website was launched, initially focused on tourism and later on car-sharing services. The letters in the “Covoiturage.fr” name were colored in different shades:
- “Co” – burgundy;
- “voitur” – lilac;
- “age” – lime green;
- “.fr” – yellow.
These same shades were used to stylize a flower on the logo’s left side. It looked like a smiling face with three large petals. Below it was a composition of a black arch and two lilac ovals – legs standing on a hill.
2011 – 2013
Designers changed the color scheme, using blue instead of lilac. The other shades grew lighter and brighter, adding more optimism to the emblem. This was done to inspire customer trust.
2013 – 2014
In 2013, BlaBlaCar was created to unify all websites related to Covoiturage.fr. Its name replaced the previous text on the logo, and the color sequence changed: the first three letters were green, the next three were blue, and the last three were dark red. They were also different in size and placement. The flower symbol was smaller.
2013 – 2018
The corporate logo, introduced at the beginning of BlaBlaCar’s career, featured only its name. It was divided into three parts: the first fragment was green, the second was blue, and the third was red with a touch of fuchsia. The elements were separate; they were not connected. The first two words were arranged diagonally at the same angle, and the third stood horizontally. The logo contained nothing else – it was as concise as possible, without unique details and unnecessary accents. The text was in bold: wide letters without serifs. The main emphasis was on finding people who wanted to have fun on a trip and chatting with fellow travelers.
2018 – today
After the 2018 redesign, the BlaBlaCar logo has completely changed its style. It has become sterner, more confident, and more modern. The lettering is now in a straightforward font, with no large gaps between its components. All three parts are merged, but each word starts with a capital letter. The characters are bold, neat, and colored in navy blue with a touch of green.
On the left, the timeline service’s trademark appears: two lowercase “b”s that slightly overlap. Their connection is so slight that the letters look like two commas in the form of opening quotation marks. One is dark blue, matching the inscription, and the other is blue. The overlap is colored light green. Such a delicate connection reflects the transport broker’s key goal: finding worthy fellow travelers with whom it would be interesting to travel. The classic expression “blah-blah” alludes to this. The unusual acronym also illustrates the relationship that develops between the driver and passenger during the trip. It also refers to the car seats.
Font and Colors
In its early years, the BlaBlaCar logo for the online platform was fun and unserious. But later, when the service proved practical and in demand, the owners switched to a stern design. They removed the fun effect by connecting all three parts of the name, correcting the slant, and aligning the word horizontally. They also tweaked the color palette to match the new logo style. The Koto agency developed the mature version of the visual identity.
The first logo version uses Tahoma Bold. In the second version, we preferred a neutral, clear geometric style. Grilli Type created this custom font. It adapts GT Eesti.
The corporate palette is varied: the debut emblem is dominated by bright colors (green, red, blue), while the modern emblem features restrained tones (dark blue with green). They emphasize the company’s friendliness and professionalism.