MOTOROLA CEBIT
Between 1999 and 2003 was spent in advertising, which was a step
away from the focus on cultural clients. The transition happened when
designer Tony Arefin seduced Rebeca into working on the Microsoft
account at Wieden & Kennedy, where he was art director. In the early
90s, Tony and Rebeca became close when he and Chee Pearlman as
designer and editor of I.D. Magazine, published an article on her work.
Communicating to hundreds, maybe thousands had been the audience range of Rebeca Méndez Studio. To communicate to millions came with a whole new set of methodologies, responsibilities and consequences. The scale and global reach was the right challenge to take on at that time, as well as to charge, in a week, the fees that would usually take a couple of months, and to work with the best people money could buy.
In 1998 Rebeca split her time between her studio and Wieden & Kennedy, working freelance under Michael Prieve, with wonderful talent such as Tony Arefin, Maggie Powers, Whitney Lowe and Kate Tregoning, who would become her core creative team for years to come. She followed Arefin to Ogilvy & Mather where she worked freelance under Chris Wall on the IBM account, then was employed as creative director under Brian Collins, heading the Brand Integration Group (BIG) in Los Angeles, working on global brand and advertising campaigns for accounts such as AT&T, IBM and Motorola, among others.
Brand Integration Group, or BIG, was Ogilvy’s inhouse expert team of graphic designers who were deployed to launch, design and revitalize brands through a process called 360 degree branding, which views every point of contact between the company and its customers, vendors, employees and the environment at large as a touch point that deserves an integral design. To build a brand is to create a culture, one that people can identify with, want to subscribe too, and make part of their life.
CeBIT is Europe’s largest information technology trade show, held every year in Hannover, Germany. It is the premier annual event for manufacturers to introduce products, showcase innovations and unveil the marketing strategy employed to conquer the market. Brand Integration Group Los Angeles was tasked to evolve Motorola’s brand visual language for global implementation and to launch it through the design of Motorola’s booths for three trade exhibitions: 3GSM in Cannes, France, CeBIT in Hannover, Germany, CTIA in New Orleans, USA, and to create a 360 degree brand for Motorola’s Motocoder global event in Shanghai, where all their tech- nology partners meet annually to mutually reinforce the business relationship. The project included experience and environmental design, publications, print and web advertising, and motion design. We were given ten weeks for concept, design and production.
To accomplish these goals—through a minefield of inhuman deadlines and power crazed, tantrum throwing, conniving account executives—Rebeca assembled an amazing creative team to be able to direct photo shoots, work with architects and programmers, direct short films and digital animations, and create a robust visual lexicon for global implementation. Central to the evolution of the brand visual language was for all design elements to emerge from the formal qualities of the Motorola ‘emsignia’. The grids of concentric dot patterns and geometric phone patterns follow this creative direction in form and behavior. The objective was to bring to life Motorola’s brand promise of Intelligence Everywhere.
“There is no other designer in the United States that I would have asked to do on the West Coast what we have done in New York with BIG. There is no one I know with that degree of passion, commitment, intelligence and capability for broad thinking. She goes down the path less taken, and I’ll gladly follow behind her.”
– Brian Collins, Senior Partner & Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather, Brand Integration Group (BIG), 2003
Additional credits:
BIG NY Executive Creative Director: Brian Collins; Designers: Willem Henri Lucas, Kate Tregonning, Whitney Lowe, Beth Elliott, Geoff Kaplan, Simon Johnston, Alex Kohnke, Winnie Li, Yuju Yeo, among others.
Animation: Alexei Tylevich of Logan.
Communicating to hundreds, maybe thousands had been the audience range of Rebeca Méndez Studio. To communicate to millions came with a whole new set of methodologies, responsibilities and consequences. The scale and global reach was the right challenge to take on at that time, as well as to charge, in a week, the fees that would usually take a couple of months, and to work with the best people money could buy.
In 1998 Rebeca split her time between her studio and Wieden & Kennedy, working freelance under Michael Prieve, with wonderful talent such as Tony Arefin, Maggie Powers, Whitney Lowe and Kate Tregoning, who would become her core creative team for years to come. She followed Arefin to Ogilvy & Mather where she worked freelance under Chris Wall on the IBM account, then was employed as creative director under Brian Collins, heading the Brand Integration Group (BIG) in Los Angeles, working on global brand and advertising campaigns for accounts such as AT&T, IBM and Motorola, among others.
Brand Integration Group, or BIG, was Ogilvy’s inhouse expert team of graphic designers who were deployed to launch, design and revitalize brands through a process called 360 degree branding, which views every point of contact between the company and its customers, vendors, employees and the environment at large as a touch point that deserves an integral design. To build a brand is to create a culture, one that people can identify with, want to subscribe too, and make part of their life.
CeBIT is Europe’s largest information technology trade show, held every year in Hannover, Germany. It is the premier annual event for manufacturers to introduce products, showcase innovations and unveil the marketing strategy employed to conquer the market. Brand Integration Group Los Angeles was tasked to evolve Motorola’s brand visual language for global implementation and to launch it through the design of Motorola’s booths for three trade exhibitions: 3GSM in Cannes, France, CeBIT in Hannover, Germany, CTIA in New Orleans, USA, and to create a 360 degree brand for Motorola’s Motocoder global event in Shanghai, where all their tech- nology partners meet annually to mutually reinforce the business relationship. The project included experience and environmental design, publications, print and web advertising, and motion design. We were given ten weeks for concept, design and production.
To accomplish these goals—through a minefield of inhuman deadlines and power crazed, tantrum throwing, conniving account executives—Rebeca assembled an amazing creative team to be able to direct photo shoots, work with architects and programmers, direct short films and digital animations, and create a robust visual lexicon for global implementation. Central to the evolution of the brand visual language was for all design elements to emerge from the formal qualities of the Motorola ‘emsignia’. The grids of concentric dot patterns and geometric phone patterns follow this creative direction in form and behavior. The objective was to bring to life Motorola’s brand promise of Intelligence Everywhere.
“There is no other designer in the United States that I would have asked to do on the West Coast what we have done in New York with BIG. There is no one I know with that degree of passion, commitment, intelligence and capability for broad thinking. She goes down the path less taken, and I’ll gladly follow behind her.”
– Brian Collins, Senior Partner & Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather, Brand Integration Group (BIG), 2003
Additional credits:
BIG NY Executive Creative Director: Brian Collins; Designers: Willem Henri Lucas, Kate Tregonning, Whitney Lowe, Beth Elliott, Geoff Kaplan, Simon Johnston, Alex Kohnke, Winnie Li, Yuju Yeo, among others.
Animation: Alexei Tylevich of Logan.
