Inspiration: Toyota leaves Helvetica in its tracks

Creating peripheral promotional offerings to help boost your new brand or product isn't easy, but it's cool. It's really cool. Toyota is unleashing their newest microcar, a tiny little number called the "iQ". This tiny torpedo seats four and eats up a mere 118 inches of roadspace, which is easy when everyone is sitting on everyone else's lap. What? Oh, it apparently actually does have four seats. Oh. In the video we only really see two designers and a racecar driver slash honoury designer perform the clown car trick, so you will have to forgive me.

Designers Damien Aresta, Pierre Smeets and Zach Lieberman traced giant letters on the floor of an unused airplane hanger and used the agile little auto to skid and squeal it's way through the alphabet while cameras and computers recorded and mapped its paths. The finished product was a tired honorary designer and "iQ Agility", a playful, hand-scrawled looking typeface highlighting the iQ's tight turning radius and maneouverability.

Creating a typeface as an offering may have a fairly limited audience, but it shows a whack of inspiration and creativity sorely lacking in modern marketing. Strike that. It shows a whack of inspiration and creativity rare and prized in modern marketing.

You can download the font here.