Peterbilt RIG 2 Design Challenge
What do you do when an iconic design that has defined your brand for decades is threatened by new regulations?
That was the question Peterbilt was facing in 2012 when they approached Local Motors to with a unique and very special design challenge. Peterbilt's infamous '389' tractor -- the 'icon' of American trucking, was facing a new regulations that would mandate design changes to its classic long haul tractor design. These new regulations meant changing design elements that defined the 389 - ultimately changing the entire look of the tractor. Peterbilt wanted to get out in front of this and together with Local Motors, we put together the Road Icon Generation 2 (RIG2) Design challenge.
Still regarded by many in in the Local Motors community as one of the best design challenges ever run by Local Motors, the RIG2 challenge was unique in that designers from around the world were able to work directly with the design and engineering teams at Peterbilt. The feedback loop was incredibly rich, the discussions yielded amazing results, and the data Peterbilt was able to offer the community meant Local Motors community member were working with the same data the Peterbilt design team worked with.
In the end 127 designs were submitted with 98 being accepted. There were a total of 10 finalists.
I had the incredible privilege to lead this project as the project manager and lead designer, as well as community liaison and partnership liaison with Peterbilt.
Below is all of my design work for the custom website that I designed, as well as all of the promotional imagery, logo design, badge design, and ignition kit assets.
The RIG2 Design challenge logotype incorporated the texture elements from the Peterbitl Logo with chrome surrounds and a drop shadow receive. The use of a rigid upright font is meant to give it a strong stance.
The banner below was designed for promotional use on various social networks as well as CarBodyDesign.com to inform designers around the world of the new challenge.
As part of the 'ignition kits' that we provided to Local Motors Community Members, this 3 View photoshop file incorporated the required elements that designers needed to design around. They could the elements around depending on the various boundaries here indicated by the various colored boxes). Designing around this 'package' file was a requirement for a valid entry.
In addition to creating a 3 view package file for designers, we often would provide 95th percentile male and 5th percentile female 'Oscars' for designers to use when packaging their design. However in the case of the RIG2 challenge, we had to create an entirely new set of oscars based on data Peterbilt provided us about the size of the average trucking driver. Thus we created 'Bo and Berta' to accurately represent the sizes of truckers designers needed to work with. While it is somewhat humorous, this was entirely based on years of research data.
The coveted Local Motors RIG2 badge. If you received one of these, you were one of 127 people in the world to receive one, representing that you entered a design into the RIG2 challenge to help redefine the future of Peterbilt trucks.
