Tesla's Cybertruck has been unveiled. This bizarre new vehicle is an electric pickup truck with some daring branding we thought had been faxed to us from the 1990s – including typography that would be totally at home in our retro fonts guide.
And to focus on the branding for a moment, rather than the actual truck (more on the earth-shattering launch later), it seems the bold wordmark may hide a hidden treat in the form of a design Easter Egg – a secret message from designer to consumer. We hasten to stress that it may be hiding a treat, as we're not totally sold that the alleged Easter Egg isn't a little bit of a stretch. (For Easter Eggs that definitely exist, see our favourite Google Easter Eggs.)
So where did this idea come from? Let's take a look. And if you haven't seen the original Cybertruck branding yet, you can read all about it here.
Online forum Cybrtrkownersclub (currently down – we assume because of all last night's excitement) was buzzing with speculation about the release of the electric pickup truck, and user KuMX went a step further with some stellar creative thinking. He put together this video (above) detailing how the Cybertruck wordmark could be rearranged into a stylised pickup truck. And now people are wondering if Tesla did it on purpose.
But does it actually look like a truck, though? Well, kind of. We were ready to be scathing but it obviously has the integral parts of a vehicle there, and that might just be a person driving it. Or maybe it's a seat.
Some serious transformation had to happen to those letters to make it appear though... and with such a wealth of angles and shapes to choose from, the wordmark potentially contains the building blocks for a range of stylised pictures (we wonder what else could be achieved?). Or, maybe this whole thing actually explains why the typography is so stylised in the first place.
Now that the Cybertruck has actually been revealed in all its *glory* (at a hilariously eventful reveal event at which all the truck's windows shattered), we think the case may have been strengthened. The slanted front of the model is bang on, even if the bubble-like back of the image is not so accurate.
Hiding Easter Eggs would be on-brand for Tesla, as secret messages and functions have been rife in the company's past marketing strategy.
About a minute in, we flashed a teaser pic of Tesla cyberpunk truck pic.twitter.com/hLsGsdyuGAMarch 16, 2019
A hidden reveal in the credits of Blade Runner is one example of this, as well as this email reveal for the Model Y.
Tesla pushes first #ModelY Easter Egg via over-email update https://t.co/ioce1HsTRkMarch 9, 2019
Kudos to KuMX for the strategic thinking – if it wasn't actually intended then he has pulled off something quite special, and if it's official then he's cracked the egg-code of the year.
Searching for Easter Eggs is almost as fun as having them handed to you (we don't think we've sucked the fun out of it with this Google Easter Eggs piece so check it out), and it's always a special feeling when you connect with a designer's intention – especially when it's a product that's important to you. So perhaps it doesn't really matter if KuMX's Easter Egg is the real deal.
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