91. CHEMISTRI
A typical Cadillac XLR customer enjoys driving a very fine car but will most likely never look under its hood. They do, however, like understanding what makes their vehicle superior.

“A car catalog provides the ‘deeper dive’ into a vehicle and its innerworkings for prospective buyers,” says designer Sarah Trent. This one also presents the car as fashion, something important to the Cadillac company. “‘Jewel-like’ was a term used regularly,” Trent says. She herself was very impressed by the unique design of the XLR, a design that makes the car appear deceptively simple to the buyer.

Nature became the overarching theme for the book, a decision arrived at through a gradual understanding of the product itself, Trent says. “Simplicity, intuition, and awe were the strongest underlying themes,” she explains. “Material connections within the vehicle, like eucalyptus wood and balsa used for its interior and floor, or the extensive water-testing of its roof, brought us to nature eventually.

“Only a person who works in advertising would shamelessly characterize nature like this,” Trent admits, “but, like XLR, nature is deceptively simple and worthy of the greatest awe. I realized the book was really a love aΩair between a company and a product, and I hoped that that would telegraph to consumers.” Romy Ashby