When you change the way you look at reality, amazing things can happen. That’s the Nissan spirit. The Nissan Shift. How do you take a traditional auto show wheelstand and give it the Nissan Shift? That was the challenge presented to me by David Lentz, the creative director on the Nissan account at George P. Johnson. I began the project by completing a series of design research studies and a competitive audit of all the wheelstands displayed at the most recent Detroit Auto Show. What I found was that, for the most part, they all took a very traditional approach to displaying information about each vehicle through the use of static graphics. One wheelstand per vehicle. My concept took a dramatic shift from this approach by thinking of each wheelstand as a dynamic information vessel, able to be rotated, and focussed towards each vehicle of interest, with a built in touchscreen interface for navigating the content.

Using a potentiometer, a microcontroller and Flash, I developed a prototype that was used to help refine the concept before working directly with Jamie Barlow, Mindflood, and Hüttinger, an exhibition engineering firm in Germany, to refine and finalize the physical, creative and technological development of the project. Each interactive wheelstand contains the entire Nissan vehicle lineup, and can be easily custom configured on site in minutes, through a simple application, once the final vehicle floor plan has been decided upon and the cars have been moved into place.

Client: Nissan
Agency: George P. Johnson
Role: Producer, Concept, Creative Director, Technical Director