We tend to think of modern Audi as a quite serious, engineering and precision-focused company, and it feels like their willingness to accept various forms of foolery, such as tom-, or play, such as horse, is limited at best. They’re a company that I would expect, typographically, to be hardcore Helvetica, maybe Futura. But that’s not the case! Audi once had genuine fun with their typography, and even modern Audi has a bit of typographic idiosyncrasy going on.
Let’s start with the fun old stuff, from 1973, which you can see up there. This is very ’70s typography, so much so that I think the vowels in there may tell you they noticed you from across the bar and invite you to do a line of blow in the bathroom before coming up to their room. Let’s look at the whole ad:
Holy crap that kerning is tight! The filled in middles of the Ds and Os and Bs are unique to this cover, to showcase the vibrant set of colors available to the charming little Audi Fox there. It’s also worth noting the nice fox-face logo set into the “O” in “FOX” and just the fact that the Fox imagery was taken so far.
See, the dogs are there because they’re on a fox hunt! Get it? It’s one of the only examples of a carmaker showing their car as a prey animal actively being hunted, at least that I can think of off the top of my head. It’s a weird image if you’re trying to sell cars? But I suppose we’re supposed to believe the Audi outran the dogs and they didn’t get to sink their teeth into that delicious metal and rubber, hot bursts of oil spraying into mouths.
I do love this typography and design, though; look how good this ad for the Foxwagen (yes, one word) looks:
Damn, that’s so good! The road just defined by the yellow stripe! The angle of the car! Fantastic.
Modern Audi is a bit more serious, but note the type treatment:
That’s a bit of an unexpected typeface, a little more friendly and casual than I’d have guessed just based on my notions of Audi. It’s actually their own special typeface, called Audi Type, and you can get it right here! It’s a nice, clean typeface, it looks like. I just downloaded it. Who knows, maybe I’ll need to make some Audi ads or try to fake an ID card or something? Never hurts to be prepared!
My funniest car story is when I had a 70’s Audi wagon I got for $100 total.
The accelerator cable broke so I hooked some small rope up to the throttle from the engine out the hood through the driver’s window and pulled it to accelerate. I drove it home on back roads the whole way and the brakes weren’t very good either…I was a cheapskate
I once owned a Fox
or should I say
She once owned me
Damn I loved that car!
Isn’t “boot black” something horny?
Yeah, that color name wouldn’t quite fly today.
Since I started making promotional images for my car club, I’ve become more interested in fonts than I ever thought I would be.
Yessssss, talk typography to me.
I’ve found the quickest way to bridge the gap between engineering and design is to know something, anything, about typography. Having opinions about kerning will win the hearts, minds, and trust of your project’s designers, provided you acquiesce to their expertise and are respectful.
Ah, yes, among many such details, using the names of the colors to showcase the colors themselves is pretty clever; to be sure, that’s been done many times before and since then but it’s particularly effective here. Hopefully you all can do more posts along such lines, especially since cartype.com seems to be defunct now, unfortunately. That was a great website for perusing graphic design, typography, and other artistic endeavors in the automotive world.
Jason, you probably already know of this (as do long-time readers of the old site) since the designer is a friend of Matt Hardigree and had actually posted about his efforts on that site, but here’s an excellent post about creating a typeface based on one of the greatest emblems of all time, namely that of the Lancia Stratos, errant apostrophe notwithstanding:
http://mccauleycreativellc.com/blog/2012/03/jalopnik-lancia-stratos-typeface
That’s surprisingly cool, thanks for sharing!
Those Foxes were quite Dashing, weren’t they?
I had no recollection of Audi selling the Foxwagon in the US! I can’t imagine many have survived.
A heavily modded one sold on BAT a few years back:
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1976-audi-fox/
Love it, so fresh and clean. Bonus for the clever use of an excerpt of “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”
That hounds ad is the best hunting ad since Volkswagen featured Elmer Fudd in ads for the early Wabbit. Be verwy quiet …
It bothers me through invoking “The quick brown fox,” that the lazy copywriters did not jam in the full alphabet.
Damn those lazy dogs.
I owned one of these…a 73 brown sedan…should have spent more time on the electricals and water intrusion and less on typeface. Despite all the issues, still have a soft spot for it.
I also like how the OO in BOOT BLACK are overlapped, like the Audi logo OOOO
My college girlfriend’s friend had a Fox. And she was a fox. I am not sure why I remember this so vividly.
I think you know quite clearly why you remember that.
Maybe it is that recurring dream…
I hate new Audis. I love old Audis.
Imagine coming across an old Jaguar ad where the typeface used is Comic Sans.
The evolution to the later VW Fox of the ’80s is unmistakable. A co-worker had one of those, and I was jealous for a little while. But it was not a delightful ownership experience.
Who just said “Fuckswagon”? Now will you go and clean your mouth with soap.
I used to use VAG Rounded on my phone, maybe I oughta switch to Audi Type.
The top shot omits the ground shadow and it looks like the Audi is crowdsurfing on top of the dogs.
The typeface is ITC Avant-Garde Gothic with the terminals of C and G lopped off for the awesome effect.
Sorry, but that kerning doesn’t work for me. It is too aggressive. That last ad, all I can decipher is “THE CYBERTRUCK BY AUDI” 😉
They also, apparently, once offered actual colors on their cars.
It’s so strange to see how far they’ve fallen. Like you showed, all Audi photos now just look like a passerby took a photo of the background and a parked gray car was in the shot.
This for sure