MERCEDESBENZTHE GARAGE
TechMasters reimagined as a working garage. The annual training event for Mercedes-Benz service staff, themed and built end to end.
VIEW
TechMasters is the annual training event for Mercedes-Benz service staff. The 2021 edition needed a thematic identity that mechanics could feel at home inside.
The brief came down from Mercedes-Benz management with a new direction for the year: the working garage. Not a polished showroom, not an executive presentation room. The textures, sounds, and visual codes of the place where the service work actually happens. Through Event House, the agency-side team paired me with a 3D designer to translate the theme into a coherent live event.
My role spanned concept development, all 2D design across event collateral and signage, and partial direction on the 3D environment. The scale of the brand demanded a discipline match between strategic intent and execution detail at every scale, from coaster to building facade.
THE CHALLENGE
Translate a single thematic phrase ("the garage") into a coherent visual system that scaled from invitation card to full event environment without falling into the mechanic-shop cliché. The brand language had to read as Mercedes-Benz operating in a garage, not a generic auto shop wearing a Mercedes badge. Every element needed to honour the brand's tonal discipline while embracing the rougher, more industrial feel of a service space.
THE RESPONSE
I built the identity around studio-grade industrial cues: precise typography in stencil weights, exposed-grid layouts borrowed from technical manuals, signage that referenced parts catalogues without imitating them. Photography lit like a service bay rather than a showroom. The 3D environment translated the same logic to spatial scale, making sure print and built deliverables landed as one system rather than two systems sharing a colour palette.
ERA
BLES
- 01Thematic Concept DirectionConcept
- 02Event Visual Identity SystemIdentity
- 03Environmental Graphics & WayfindingEnvironmental
- 04Print Collateral & Training ManualsPrint
- 05Coaster & Merchandise SetCollateral
- 063D Environment DirectionSpatial
CESS
2D and 3D worked in parallel from week one. The longer the brand sat on the page alone, the more the cliché crept in.
Decisions about typography, photographic treatment, and material specification were made jointly between the print and spatial sides so the printed deliverables and the built environment landed as one system. The collateral set ran from training manuals and coaster designs to large-format wayfinding, with the same restrained mark applied at every scale.
The brand's tonal system held under thematic pressure throughout. Mercedes-Benz silver and graphite were preserved, the typographic ratios stayed faithful to the master guidelines, and the new garage layer was added in restraint rather than substitution. The thematic identity sat on top of the brand discipline, not in place of it.
"The team gave it our best shot. The result was a grand success that secured and enriched both us and the client with a new experience."
Project reflection · 2021
THE OUTCOME
2D and 3D deliverables developed in parallel, landing as a single coherent garage system rather than two visual languages sharing a colour palette.
Full annual training event executed to Mercedes-Benz brand spec under the new thematic direction set by the client's management.
Approach informed how subsequent annual TechMasters concepts were developed: thematic layer over brand discipline, never in place of it.