Recently, Toyota hired two graphic designers, Pierre Smeets and Damien Aresta of the Belgian studio pleaseletmedesign, to create a typeface. Then a pro racecar driver, Stef Vancampenhoudt, got behind the wheel of the Toyota iQ and approximated the glyphs in a large hangar while being filmed by overhead cameras. Coder extraordinaire Zach Lieberman devised software that interpreted the filmed movement of colored dots on the car and translated that movement into the font’s glyphs.
Or something like that — the technical details are a little beyond me, honestly. But the video below will show you bits of the process, and you can download the font itself at nl.toyota.be/iqfont.
You can see photos from the making of the font on flickr.
Do you think this is a successful marketing campaign for the Toyota iQ? Sound off by clicking the Comments button.
This article was last modified on January 6, 2023
This article was first published on July 20, 2009
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