
Typeface by Toyota. The iQ font Designed By A Moving Car. - kyro
http://ifitshipitshere.blogspot.com/2009/07/font-designed-by-car-toyota-iq.html
======
thesystemis
figured I'd jump in on HN since I've been lurking for a while (and loving this
site), and mention that I wrote the software for this, which is tracking the
four colors on the car.

It's using openframeworks (openframeworks.cc) an open source, cross platform
c++ toolkit (which I am helping develop). the source code for the car tracking
software is here:

[http://www.openframeworks.cc/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=...](http://www.openframeworks.cc/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2314&hilit=iq+font)

and you can check out openframeworks at

<http://openframeworks.cc>

<http://openframeworks.cc/download>

It was quite fun to work on this -- the driver and type designers blew me away
with how good they were.

~~~
invisibility
how did you end up working on this project?

are you a freelance software engineer? do you generally work on creative
projects like these?

~~~
thesystemis
Sorry if this is a long answer ;)

I work primarily as a software artist and teacher, and we (as in the folks who
work on openframeworks) sometimes we do commercial projects / freelance work.
Because of the nature of what we do (computer vision, interaction design,
realtime software) we get invited to work on very diverse projects.

For this particular project, Theo, who is part of the OF team, had already
been working on something IQ related with the advertising company Happiness
Brussels, which was postponed because of the economy. When they thought of
this project, they contacted Theo, who put them in touch with me as I happened
to be in Brussels teaching a workshop and thought this would be fun to help
with. Everything clicked from there.

If it's helpful, here are some links to other projects (so you can see what
kind of stuff I work on):

<http://vimeo.com/4706049> / <http://vimeo.com/4732884> /
<http://vimeo.com/2892576> / <http://vimeo.com/2375069>

and I'm currently working on a project covered a few days ago on hacker news
;)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=720146>

~~~
invisibility
are you trained as an artist or as a software engineer? hmm, maybe what i want
to ask is, from which "side" did you get into being a software artist?

~~~
thesystemis
I was trained as an artist and got into computers / programming
accidentally... now I teach artists how to code (and sometimes CS students
more artistic potentials of software / programming).

------
wmeredith
I don't really care for the font, but the marketing stunt was executed
beautifully and reading about the process was fascinating. This is a very cool
idea to get techies talking about your product.

~~~
smokinn
Definitely agree. The font itself looks out of focus and starts giving me a
headache if I stare at it too long but the idea itself was genius.

------
Locke1689
Very clever idea. I'm not sure how readable it will be in practice... but
definitely cool.

------
malkia
Cool idea! I guess iQ would not be available in US?

------
GrandMasterBirt
EVIL MARKETING. But I love it!

------
imbaczek
Q looks too much like 0. otherwise cool.

~~~
tspiteri
Q doesn't look like 0 at all in this font; Q is large and has a line across it
and 0 is small and has no line across it.

