Established the brand identity for an EV company from a blank page.

Overview

Harbinger Motors is an electric vehicle company that I helped launch as founding creative. I came in before there was a brand to point to, when the company was an engineering ambition in search of an identity. My job was to give it a face, a voice, and a way to make people feel the future it was building.

The Challenge: a startup speaking to a legacy industry

A new EV company faces a specific problem. The product is genuinely advanced, but the audience is conservative, technical, and skeptical of newcomers. Harbinger needed a brand that signaled credibility and engineering seriousness without hiding behind the cold, anonymous language the category defaults to. The work was to make something new feel trustworthy, and to make something technical feel human.

The Brand: built from the ground up

I established the brand identity from a blank page, defining the positioning, the visual system, and the tone that would carry across every surface, from the product itself to the room where people first encountered it. [Add: the central brand idea or attribute you defined, for example the single word or promise the identity was built around.] The goal was a system disciplined enough to read as engineering-grade, but with enough warmth and point of view to feel like a company with conviction rather than a spec sheet.

The Experience: environmental storytelling

A young company's brand is most fragile and most persuasive in the moment someone stands in front of it. I designed the spatial showroom experience and the environmental storytelling that turned an abstract technical promise into something a person could walk through and believe. Every choice was made to do the same quiet work, to convert curiosity and skepticism into trust.

The Outcome

A successful launch at the Detroit Auto Show. A booth with authentic branding, messaging, and creative that was built for a different audience. From it’s official launch in 2022 Harbinger Motors has grown to a nearly $1 billion private company.

🔍 FOUNDING CREATIVE DIRECTOR,  branding, PR, creative direction, experiential design, web design, video and photography

📍 Garden Grove, CA | Detroit, MI

Blue delivery truck inside a warehouse with a company logo 'HARBINGER' on the side.
A man in a blue suit giving a presentation on a stage with a large black backdrop displaying the name 'HARBINGER' and its logo at a busy auto industry trade show, with many attendees gathered around watching him, and various car exhibits visible in t
Two men in suits stand and converse near a robotic vehicle chassis with electronic components, displayed in front of a large screen showing a close-up of electronics and circuitry under a robotic arm.
Close-up of a high-performance electric car motor installed in a race car chassis.
A close-up of electric vehicle batteries on a metallic frame, with orange cables connecting them.
A man in a blue blazer and jeans holding a microphone and a tablet, standing on stage in front of a large screen with the logo and name 'Harbinger', addressing an audience.
Business card for John Smith, including title, position, phone number, email, and website
Set of five Harbinger logos with different color schemes, followed by a monochrome version on a black background.
An indoor space with a black Harbinger booth, yellow overhead structures, seating areas, and a white truck.
Top-down view of an indoor vehicle testing and inspection facility divided into four bays labeled Bay 1, Bay 2, Bay 3, and Bay 4. Bays contain various equipment, vehicles, and workstations, with color-coded zones indicating different operational area
Harbinger webpage with a dark background featuring a close-up of a mechanical or electronic component, and white text stating 'Built without compromise.'
Top-down view of an electric vehicle chassis with labeled sections including front corner module, battery pack, electric drive unit, chassis frame, rear axle architecture, and 50-degree wheel cut.