30 Years in Motion!
First of all, I apologize to the graphic designer that has been creating these swooshes, swoops, and awkward flowing lines for the last 30 years. I do not want this website to be a platform of negativity but…lets talk about trailer graphics. How on earth did every trailer and RV on the road today get wrapped with the same dumb vinyl stickers for the last 30 years? This is how I see it going down. The year is 1993 and the coked up, power tie wearing CEO of “fill in the blank” fancy schmancy RV company yells at his subordinates, “You know what we need to do? When people see our trailers driving down the road we need to remind them that they are moving! Hey Art Guy, go hop on that fancy Apple computer of yours and lets see some mockups in 20 minutes”. Somehow those graphics became the standard for the next 30 years.
We bought a travel trailer a while back and the first thing I did was strip off all those oversized vinyl stickers of what looked to be giant fingernail clippings and ended up with the sexy naked trailer I have today. Not into fingernail clippings? Let’s call them oversized swooshes. The trend of the late 90’s. Back then, the swoosh (also known as the boomerang) was all the rage. Designers argued that it communicated motion and high-tech communication—adding instant interest to a design! Apparently the powers the be at the RV and Trailer companies agreed strongly with this misguided theory.
Now I have been accused of being mildly obsessive, especially when it comes to issues of graphic design. I have brought this issue of outdated boring trailer and RV graphics up to multiple campers at trailer parks throughout our travels and no one seems to even notice! Is this a conspiracy? Or maybe the RV people are geniuses and have found that baby boomers love buying items plastered with the swoosh. Does someone need to make a Documentary about the downfall of the Recreational Vehicle graphic?
The following images are the first 4 images I saw on Google. Look at how fast they are going! You know how you can tell? Because the graphics look like wind!
Now look at the following trailers! Sexxxxxy. Now I am not saying that all trailers have to look like a 1964 Shasta, which is why I snuck in that meth trailer. But dang, even that looks good. Even just going back to the early 90’s and looking at some of the old Terry trailers…nice clean horizontal lines with big and bold color blocking. It is really interesting (to me at least) that in such a competitive high-money industry there has been no evolution concerning the aesthetics to these beasts.
Somehow the bigger they are the uglier the graphics. Now I may be way off the mark and maybe these companies have done intense audience testing and have proven that swooshes, fake wind, and motion lines look better parked in a beautiful lakeside campground but something tells me that has not happened.
Ok, that’s all I’ve got. That is my rant. If you work at one of these Travel Trailer manufacturers please call us! We would love to help you move into the 2000’s. Next time you see one of these poorly stickered up billboards driving down the road remember to search Google for that Documentary that I am working on.
