Elon Musk just made an unexpected, albeit welcome, revelation about the fonts used in his private companies, Tesla and Space. In an interview with Bloomberg at the 2018 Neural Information Processing Systems conference in Long Beach, California, Musk revealed that there’s meaning behind the fonts’ designs after all. Musk said he somewhat agonized over the design of these fonts, and even brought in various architects to design the letterforms. We have to admit, we were starting to question whether or not Musk really agonized over this decision at all, so this was quite the surprise!
Why did Elon agonize over fonts?
Elon was interviewed by The Washington Post at the International Space Station earlier this month, and he said he quite agonized over the font design for both of his companies: Tesla and SpaceX. Elon has always been heavily invested in his businesses, so it’s no surprise that this part would be difficult to decide upon. One of the most interesting parts of designing a logo is looking at what your customers want; so we turned to Twitter to see what everyone thought about these fonts.
Font Anatomy: The Swoop
In typography, the swoop is a curve that resembles an ‘x’ shape and is commonly used to cross out words or draw attention to text in the fashion of highlighting or underlining. The swooping X usually has a light stroke that flows on top of a heavier one below it, forming an ‘x’. Often these letters are lighter than the text around them in order to stand out as well.
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Emojis as Brand Icons?
Brand recognition is key to establishing a business and bringing in new customers. However, what do you do when your product has no practical use that can be recognized? Most manufacturers turn to emojis as their brand identity, but this one company took it to the next level. Literally.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors and Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), used two question marks as his companies’ logo – one for each organization. The former question mark symbolizes a future of human space exploration, while the latter signifies a future of electric vehicles. According to Musk, it was an easy decision.
What Is Font Psychology?
Font psychology is a big deal. The font you choose can say a lot about the values you hold, your brand, and even the way people respond to your design. There are tons of studies to back up this claim; for example, researchers found that fonts with more lines were seen as being more trustworthy than fonts with less. Other studies have shown that fonts that were deemed feminine or masculine had a significant effect on respondents’ estimations of certain qualities in the study.
There are some very simple ways to know if a font is right for your brand. For example, you’ll want to choose something that’s easy to read in large doses (especially for body text), but also has a lot of personality. It also helps if it reflects what your company stands for; would it make sense for McDonalds to use Papyrus or will that just confuse people? If you aren’t sure what kind of fonts would go with your brand, try doing an image search on Google or Pinterest. Not only will you find great inspiration, but you can see which fonts seem most popular. Be careful though—don’t pick a font simply because it’s popular at the moment!
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So Which Font Did He Choose?
I’d been agonizing over it for years, literally, but when the computer needed a font to display a tiny ‘x’, I couldn’t find one that would work. So I just wrote my own. – Elan Musk
Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal made three attempts at the font design, finally settling on what he calls laser straight lines with some hint of personality. The result is a simple typeface without serifs that can be drawn with just a pen. The entire letters look like they’re pointing in the same direction because of the angled bottoms on all letters except J, Q, R, S and T. The X design is an inside joke: It looks kinda like an X.
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