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I spent 8 years, first as art director, then creative director-writer, on a variety of brands and sectors for Daimler: Detroit Diesel engines, American LaFrance fire trucks, Thomas Built school buses, Freightliner highway trucks, and more.
I was involved in 13 product launches, art directed 20+ photo shoots and prepared various divisions for a dozen trade shows.
Three successful projects were the Sprinter Van, now ubiquitous on U.S. roads, Thomas Built's innovative C2 school bus which changed the face of bus design, and I helped Detroit Diesel position the clean exhaust technology they'd invested $100M in against one other competitive technology. There was room for only one standard and I helped them make a winning case and protect that investment.
I also helped the parent company develop and design a leadership story to articulate what was strategically behind the president's ambitious string of acquisitions. While his insticts were sound, stakeholders and investors around him didn't quite understand the big picture. What started as a "design" project, ended up a collaboration with the client's communications director to lay out a credible vision and get people up to speed and excited about what the president was doing. I dubbed the company vision, All Roads, and narrated a book filled with company summaries and photography, people, maps and statistics to bring everything to life and, most importantly, tie it all together. Although I was the designer on this project, when I finished I realized this had been my first true strategic communications project.
Award-winning ads for the industry's Wheels of Time publication. While Kenworth and Peterbilt enjoy a heritage brand status, these showcased Freightliner's contribution of tough, lightweight trucks that played their part in history. I did all the photo illustration work, adding the rust, chips and scratches freehand.
Below: print ads for a variety of trade publications selling Freighliner as the brand for trucking people who were serious about business and making a profit. Photography and art direction by Karl Sandell and Oscar Reza, copy and ad design mine.
Print ad for Thomas Built Buses. Safety, uptime, stregth are table stakes for school buses, but while most commercial vehicle advertising focused on literal engineering and build details, Thomas's marketing director took a bolder approach that set that brand apart. He also used emotion and confidence, and appreciated an ad like this that put the value idea in the feature position and the bus image secondary.
Below: Introduction for a new, highly versatile engine from Detroit Diesel called the DD15. This groundbreaking design met demand in all ways: the power to pull trailers up hills and across country, and the efficiency to push profitability. "Demand it all" was our strap line and we creatively used "push" and "pull" on clings destined for doors at trade shows and dealerships. We also helped design a trailer experience that traveled around the country supporting the tour with radio spots on trucker radio and in truck stop advertising.
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