As you can imagine, Michigan has been at the forefront of the automotive, road, and traffic safety since motorized vehicles made their way down a dirt road alongside the numerous horse drawn carriages.
In 1890, the biggest safety complaint against automobiles? They frightened the horses.
And they’re still driving forward: the horseless carriage of the 1890s will soon become the driverless car of tomorrow.
To fully understand the journey of traffic safety, Michigan's Office of Highway Safety and Planning (OHSP) approached Brogan to develop a piece capturing the twist and turns that brought us to the modern crossroads.
The president of Brogan reached out in an email over one weekend to inquire about the possibilities of myself designing a booklet to capture this rich history. She attached a PDF from a comprehensive magazine article produced 25 years ago for the department's 50th anniversary. As usual, we discussed the timeline, budget, and approach. Within days the project is assigned and we were off. It was my good fortune to be paired up with a seasoned writer as well as a client who extended us a lot of latitude.
The approach was to compress the years prior to the 1940s into a spread then devote a page to each decade. The intended look was to reflect that of a Smithsonian exhibit. Additionally, it was my recommendation to capture some milestones into a 3 panel insert that could be displayed as poster in the offices of all the contributors to making the roads of Michigan safer.
The booklet contains a removable foldout which serves as a timeline poster.
