Mazda Foundation

The Mazda Foundation for the Arts and Science (Fundación Mazda para el Arte y la Ciencia) was a non-profit Colombian foundation created by the licensed assembly car factory for Mazda, the Colombian Automobile Company (Compañía Colombiana Automotriz S.A.), with the goal of improving and developing the scientific and artistic sectors in Colombia.

The Mazda Foundation was created on October 21, 1990 and offered scholarships to students of Theoretical physics, Pure mathematics and Classical music. The Foundation also had paid slots on Colombian cultural radio stations and sponsored a series Classical music concerts on Colombia for the diffusion of this music genre.

Due to poor sales of the Mazda cars in Colombia and the construction of a new assembly plant in Mexico, in 2014 Mazda closed the Compañía Colombiana Automotriz S.A. and with it the Foundation, after 24 years of philanthropic activities.

Logo
The Logo of the Mazda Foundation was designed by Colombian graphic designer Dicken Castro (1922-2016). The logo was intended to be a homage to Albert Einstein and the scientists of the 20th century. For that reason it uses Blackletter characters resembling the editorial style of research papers in the year 1905 in Germany.

The letters G, R and D stands for several concepts: G is for Gravitation, R is for the Radius of curvature, and D (Dios, God) for the myths of the creation of the universe. The disposition of the letters was created by using a Chi-squared test giving each letter the same probability. The spiral-like formation of the letters was done to resemble the expansion of galaxies in space stated on the Hubbe Theory..

2012-2014
From 2012 to the closure of the Foundation, the logo was updated with by using an inverted version of the spiral with Blackletter characters and the use of the Mazda institutional in-house font Mazda Regular for the text.