Another Team Wertz shot from the Easter Service at St. Paul Aiken.
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Worshipped at St. Paul Aiken for Easter. Been a number of years since weâve been here, but it was nice to be back.
Happy Easter from Team Wertz. Enjoyed worshipping at St. Paul Aiken⦠the church where Liz and I got married.
I just added another retro tech shirt on Cotton Bureau: 1.2 MB: The 5.25 in floppy disk.
Liz and I walked a couple miles in the park behind our house. Everything is starting to turn green. The birds are out in force. And the pollen. Springtime in South Carolina.
I’ve gotten back into designing shirts and I’m sharing them on Cotton Bureau. Today’s shirt is a salute to the 3.5 inch floppy disk. As a student, I swear I could fit an entire semester worth of work on one of these.
Green beer for St. Pats at Craft and Draft in Irmo, SC. 🍀
On April 8, a solar eclipse will occur over the middle of the United States. If you are going to be near it this time and want to celebrate the occasion, I updated my shirt from the 2017 eclipse and you can buy it on Cotton Bureau. But order soon to make sure it gets to you before the big day.
How big is the Rivian R3?
3/7/24 • 2 min read
Electric truck and SUV manufacturer Rivian announced their new R2 SUV today, but surprised everyone with a smaller R3 version as well. I love smaller cars and I’ve been waiting for new smaller EVs to hit the market, hopefully at a lower price point. The R3 looks adorable and it reminds me of a VW Rabbit, which I used to drive.1 But Rivian didn’t publish any specs so it’s hard to gauge how big R3 is.
Thankfully, they provided high res imagery and it’s easy to see the tire details — Pirelli Scorpion MS 235/55 R20. So based on a 20-inch rim size, and with a nice profile shot,2 it’s possible to estimate the size with a little bit of simple math.
These numbers are rough, obviously. But here’s what I got:
Rivian 3
Length: 149 in.
Height: 55 in.
Wheelbase: 102 in.
That length looks a little short, but as you can tell from the picture, there is very little overhang in front or behind the wheels. For a point of reference, I compared those numbers with the specs of another EV model that I like a lot:
2024 Hyundai IONIQ 5
Length: 182.5 in.
Height: 63 in.
Wheelbase: 118.1 in
The Rivian R3 looks to be a good bit smaller than the IONIQ 5 in all dimensions. In fact, the R3 looks closest to the size of a four-door gas-powered Mini Cooper:
2024 Mini Cooper Four-Door
Length: 158.5 in.
Height: 56.1 in.
Wheelbase: 101.1 in
Of course, there are lots of caveats to this comparison. My numbers are rough, the car is a prototype, and things can change as the car moves to production. Who knows when it will be available to purchase, but I’m excited about the Rivian R3. I’m not in the market right now, but my next car purchase will be an EV. That size is actually perfect for what I want – a small EV to commute back and forth to work. Now we’ll see where the price falls.3
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. And Bob likes small cars.
Stopped by the @bncolumbiasc grand opening this morning. Beautiful store. Lots of people braved the nasty weather.
Craft and Draft Irmo was the perfect place to hang out on a nasty, rainy evening last night.
Ryan started his lacrosse season this week, and I got recruited to help out with the goalies. So I guess Iâm a goalie coach now? I need to study upâ¦ð¥
Today, I learned that Tim Hortons has locations in the United States. Had coffee this morning at a location near our hotel in Atlanta.
Many of you know my wife is an amazing kindergarten teacher, but this summer, she will add another role⦠part-time Ph.D. student. Yesterday she was accepted to the @uofsc Teaching and Learning Ph.D. program. This is something sheâs wanted to do for a long time and Iâm so proud of her for taking this next step to being Dr. Wertz.
Spring on campus.
Honda shows off EV concepts – and two new logos
1/14/24 • 3 min read
A new look and branding for Honda EVs
Honda showed off two new EV concepts under the new Honda Zero brand at CES — the Saloon and the Space-Hub. Most of the coverage is focused on the futuristic looks of the concept cars. As someone who grew up going to the Chicago Auto Show and seeing the cars of the future, I’d temper any expectations that the final designs will be this radical.
But as a branding researcher, what caught my attention is that they also rolled out a new Honda “flying H” logo to be used on all new electric cars. From the official Honda press release:
The current Honda “H mark” has a long history, dating back to 1981. In launching the next-generation EVs, Honda designed a new H mark, to express the company’s determination to undergo a historic transformation as well as the ability to constantly pursue new challenges and advancements. This new design expression, which symbolizes two outstretched hands, represents Honda’s commitment to expand the possibilities of mobility and continue to meet the needs of its customers. The new H mark will be applied on future Honda EV models, including the Honda 0 Series.
The logo simplifies Honda’s current H, removing the outer bounding box and reshaping the mark. It does feel like a more modern mark and seems appropriate on the futuristic vehicles. As logo introductions go, this might be the slowest roll out in the history of visual branding since the first Honda Zero cars won’t be released until 2026. And since the logo is intended for just electric vehicles, that means that Honda is choosing to fragment their brand for a period of time.
It’s worth noting that the Honda Zero brand had its own mark at introduction. I’d be surprised if this is used in marketing when the models debut in 2026. I’m not sure what’s going on here, since the elements don’t really match anything.
Electric car branding is fascinating to me. VW and BMW add a letter or letters to the model number. Hyundai is using the Ioniq brand name for most, but not all of their EVs. Many vendors are rolling out EVs alongside their internal combustion engine lineup. VW is resurrecting the old Scout brand for a line of electric SUVs.1 But to my knowledge, Honda is the first company to create a version of their corporate logo especially for electric vehicles. As the transition to electric vehicles continues, it will be interesting to see how EV branding continues to shift and evolve.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
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Scout SUVs will be manufactured just north of my hometown – Columbia, South Carolina. ↩︎
2023 Favorite Eight
12/20/23 • 2 min read
I always pull together my favorite eight shots of the year (as a contrast to those algorithmically generated “Best Nine” posts). I love that it gives me an excuse to go back over all of my images from the last year and relive a lot of great memories.
- Our oldest decided to attend the University of South Carolina and had a great first semester.
- Liz and I are notably bad a selfies, but this outtake was better than the actual selfie and I love it.
- The girls were a little excited about seeing Taylor Swift in concert. (It was an amazing concert and I’m glad we all got to go.)
- We have a high school graduate.
- This is a big kitty yawn, but it looks so fierce.
- Ryan is still playing lacrosse and bounced back after some adversity this summer to have a great rec season.
- We attended my nephew’s football playoff games. This was the final play in overtime that sent them to the state championship. They won that game, and won a state championship.
- Birthday hike for my oldest included a stop at Looking Glass Falls in Pisgah National Forest. It was so cold, that the rocks were covered with ice.
This is the fifth year I’ve done a Favorite 8. You can see my previous posts from 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 on my other site, Sketchbook B. And I posted my 2022 here on bobwertz.com.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
Had some downtime today and built a quick monospace “pixel” font over at Fontstruct. It’s still a work in progress, but you can download it.
We took Ryan and six of his friends to dinner to celebrate his birthday a little early.
The leaves in our backyard are starting to fall.
Ryan’s last two lacrosse games for this season were earlier today. He’s been a goalie for a year-and-a-half now and he’s gotten pretty good, expecially since he’s just 11. It takes a special mentality to stand in there, shot after shot. If you notice in the image above, the ball is in the right side of the image flying toward him. Don’t worry, he saved that one.
I wasn’t sure he was going to play this season. He had a rough experience this summer, playing up two age levels against elite travel competition and it was a disaster. His confidence was obliterated and his body took a beating. His coaches admitted they were worried he was done after the experience. He put his stick in the corner when we got home from the last tournament and it stayed there, untouched, until about a week before the fall rec season. With the sign up deadline approaching, we talked and he decided to try again and see if he could get back in the groove. He really does enjoy playing and especially being part of a team. The result: He went 9-1 on the season and continued to get better and learn his position.
I don’t know how long he’ll keep playing. He’s looking forward to trying out for the JV team in a little over a year, so that’s his next goal. But however long he decides to stick with it, I’m immensely proud of his determination and resilience.
If you look closely, the ball is on the right side of the image. Ryan saved this one. Last two games today and we are done with another fall season.
Braces off. ð
Flat tire while Iâm on campus means that I can spend some time enjoying campus.
My son, Ryan, is back in goal for another fall lacrosse season.
Columbia’s Soda City Market is hoppin’ today. I remember when they only took up two blocks of Main Street.
Date night.
