Alphabet Soup Research

My word for the alphabet soup brief is reliable. Here is my ongoing research throughout the brief on how I'm going to create an appropriate typeface for the project.

Here is a diagram I have been researching on how to create stability in a structure, as you can see the layers of a pyramid are perfectly aligned in order to create a strong core in the structure itself. The apex is centre of the building and this creates the best form of reliability in the building. I came across the schematics for the pyramids which was very interesting to research as I was able to read about how mathematics-based the construction was, even though the pyramids look quite simply built. In order to balance such a massive foundation required precision that, in the ancient egyptian era, would have been much more difficult.

I've been looking at the Dyson logo and typeface as I believe Dyson is regarded as a reliable and high quality manufacturer of vacuums, and I wanted to know how they marketed themselves to be regarded as such. As you can see, the logo is created out of a sans-serif curved font, with minimal edges apart from where necessary. The 'd' is very interesting to me as it doesn't seem to connote reliablity being a completely circular form but the 'n' is very stable as an individual letterform. Another company I looked at to try and gain more of an insight into what I was producing was Dyson. Dyson is a longstanding reliable brand by James Dyson specializing in vacuums (they produce more but they first began with vacuums). James Dyson believes branding shouldn’t be a concept as it confuses consumers with quality, a consumer may believe a product is of higher quality than a competitors’ because the branding is better, when in reality it could be the opposite. I think this ethos would be able to help me because my typeface is about reliability and reliability cannot be conveyed with purely aesthetics, it has to be functional in its’ properties.

I researched the meaning of the Toyota logo which also highly related to their reliability and gives off a message of trust with their customers. The meaning of the triple overlapping elipse logo has three details. The first two ellipses signify the relationship between Toyota and their customers, the trust between them and their customers are top priority for them and this shows in the vehicles they manufacture. The final ellipse signifies the technological advancements they hope to make in the future. I hope to use this idea of making design decisions with a clear concept in mind as inspiration and I intend to design my typeface with a clear message to give off. 

I looked into Toyota as a brand as they have been voted as one of the most reliable, if not the most reliable brand of vehicle on the market today. They are number one on the problems per hundred vehicles list (that means they have the lowest amount of problems) which means technically they are the most reliable manufacturer on average. I decided to look at their branding for this reason as their ethos would surely relate with their branding as they give off a sense of trust and reliability.