Toyota Motor Corporation’s current emblem, a composition of three overlapping ovals, has been the company’s primary visual mark since October 1989. The mark was introduced to commemorate the company’s 50th anniversary and debuted on the Celsior luxury model before spreading across the model range. Development of the logo took about five years, driven by two goals: recognition from a distance announcing the “arrival of Toyota,” and a logo with strong visual impact that stands out from other automobiles. The design was also intended to fit Toyota’s rising profile in foreign countries. [1]
Design and History
Before the three-oval mark, Toyota used text-based logos. In July 1936, the automobile department of the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works held a public design competition for a new logo, receiving some 27,000 entries from across Japan. The winning design featured Japanese characters for “Toyota” surrounded by a circle. The name change from “Toyoda” to “Toyota” was driven by three factors: the Japanese characters for “Toyota” were visually simpler and sounded more pleasant, the eight-stroke count in Japanese was associated with wealth and good fortune, and the departure from the family name implied the company’s growth from a family business into a broader social entity. The mark was registered as the trademark of Toyota cars in April 1937. [2]
On October 2, 1989, the new Toyota mark and logo were introduced, designed to symbolize the progressiveness and reliability of Toyota and attached to all Toyota-brand cars as an emblem. [2]
In July 2020, Toyota Motor Europe introduced a new brand design with a reworked version of the brand logo and typography. The new brand logo distills the emblem to a simple two-dimensional design, dropping the Toyota wordmark because the emblem itself was considered well-known across Europe. [3] In March 2021, all VIS logos and end tags were updated using a revised Toyota emblem provided by Toyota Motor Corporation. [4]
Meaning and Symbolism
The three ovals are combined in a horizontally symmetrical configuration. The two perpendicular ovals inside the larger oval represent the heart of the customer and the heart of the company, overlapped to represent a mutually beneficial relationship and trust between each other. The overlapping of the two perpendicular ovals inside the outer oval symbolizes “T” for Toyota, as well as a steering wheel representing the vehicle itself. The outer oval symbolizes the world that embraces Toyota. Each oval is contoured with different stroke thicknesses, similar to the brush art in Japanese culture. [1]
The space in the background within the logo exhibits the infinite values that Toyota wishes to convey to its customers: superb quality, value beyond expectation, joy of driving, innovation, and integrity in safety, the environment, and social responsibility. [1]
An alternative official description from Toyota’s 75-year history documentation states that the inner horizontal and vertical ellipses represent customers’ expectations and the car manufacturer’s ideal, respectively, firmly interlocked to form the letter T. The outer ellipse signifies the global expanse of Toyota’s advanced technology and its infinite potential for growth. [2]
Typography and Design
Toyota uses a custom font called Toyota Type for corporate communications. The brand guidelines describe it as designed to be legible, human and approachable, with primary weights including Book, Semibold and Bold, plus a heavier Toyota Type Black weight. [5]
Toyota Red is the brand’s primary color, specified as HEX EB0A1E, RGB 235 10 30, CMYK 00 100 90 00, and PMS 186C. The brand guidelines describe it as the color of excitement, energy and confidence, and a primary logo feature. [6]
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