a bright and bold electric car with vibrant graphics stopped by cliffs with a roof rack and fun illustration design by Liz Kuz a bold and bright paint job on a car door featuring blue and yellow abstract colors. a bold car with blue and yellow colors glistening in the sun on a dirt road a detail of a car trunk custom paint job featuring a sunset over desert mountains with orange clouds and sun. a fun and bright colorful car with a unique paint job of awesome art next to red rock cliffs. a detail image of an awesome car paint job featuring the hood design with emblem for Volkswagen. a cool t shirt design by liz kuz featuring the VW icon logo in a triangle design on white shirt a poster design featuring a bright blue sky and yellow desert landscape in a vertical portrait layout a bright blue and green line art drawing of a desert landscape of the high desert in Nevada and California by Liz Kuz A floating metal waterbottle on a blue background with a bold and bright illustration of the nevada and california desert landscape.

Volkswagen x Rebelle Rally

The Rebelle Rally is the first women’s off-road navigation event that blends the love of driving and challenge of navigation through rough terrain. This year in conjunction with Volkswagen I was approached to design an epic illustration for their ID-4 all electric vehicle to compete in the Rally.

 

The car design

The event is a challenging and demanding competition that tests competitors’ driving and navigation skills. In an 8 day, 2,000-mile journey through some of the harshest terrain in the American Southwest I really wanted this graphic to stand up to the heat, scrapes and desert etching or sandblasting that would occur. The rally emphasizes teamwork, strategy, and a love of adventure, and is open to female drivers and navigators from around the world so it was no surprise that Volkswagen picked Driver Mercedes Lilienthal and navigator Emily Winslow for the event. The Rebelle Rally is unique in that it does not allow the use of GPS or electronic navigation aids, and participants must rely on traditional navigation methods such as maps, compasses, and roadbooks so having a full time navigator like Emily is key.

 

The event challenges

With over 8 days of competition it is a demanding on the car and the team let alone the custom graphic wrap I created. Since the Rebelle Rally is widely regarded as one of the toughest and most rewarding women’s motorsport events in the world and I was designing for an iconic brand I really wanted to make this car be able to be stand out in the desert. We went through 5 design rounds on the Volkswagen ID. 4 and landed on this vibrant blue landscape in the front fading to a purple desert sunset in the back. The illustration colors were intentionally designed with the hot desert sun in mind, so no black or dark colors were used. This would keep the electric ID.4 car cool to reduce any excessive battery drain that might happen.

 

The illustration

As for the color and layout, I used the Volkswagen brand color guidelines which are very similar to the color pallet that I already use. The design is inspired by the desert plants and dirt roads that were travelled in the Nevada and California desert during the event.  One of my favorite details is the 3 bushes on the front of the car and the reflection of the sun bouncing off of the clouds. I added these rounded design details in the front of the car design to soften the edges of the contrasting rock cliffs that appear at the back of the vehicle. Each logo was thoughtfully placed and scaled to be visible for drone footage above to low angle photos from below. I’m overwhelmed with the feedback and support that my artwork helped promote, but at the end of the day I just love making 2 bad ass ladies look great while navigating a amazing event.

 

The Rebelle Rally was truly a one of a kind event, I was thrilled to be designing the look of the vehicle and promotional items used for marketing of the Volkswagen ID.4 vehicle.

Client
Volkswagen
Category
Date

October 8, 2021