SPONSORED BY ENVIRONMENTALIST actor Dennis Weaver's nonprofit Institute of Ecolonomics, the Drive to Survive was a major cross-country media tour promoting alternative-fuel vehicles. As the institute’s design firm, Mitchel Design was invited to brand the high-profile event.

We were tired of progressive organizations getting "branded" by political conservatives as unpatriotic. It made no sense. So we created a logo that served as an ever-present patriotic symbol as it appeared on flyers, petitions, invitations, merchandise, flags, banners and the event cars themselves. We also splashed it on the cover of the event program, which we also edited and designed.

The fun part was creating the drive's major fundraising piece. Crafted from recyclable materials such as polypropylene, the multimedia presentation box was sent to a massive mailing list and helped the drive raise over $500,000. It used the money to drive from Los Angeles to Washington DC, staging educational events in twenty cities along the way.