Rachael Clegg COMMERCIAL
Ferodo manufactures brake pads for virtually every model of motorcycle and car, which is quite a lot of brake pads. The client wanted an image about their motorcycle brake pads so I obtained the engineer drawings of their entire range and selected the most visually diverse shapes - along with some standard brake pads. I had the drawings scaled-up and laser cut in wood to create giant brake pads and created the ‘mug shot’ grid. Inspired by Bryan Singer’s 1995 film The Usual Suspects, I went with the strap-line ‘Ferodo: the usual (and unusual) suspects in brake pads’.
Ferodo’s brief was to create a series of images celebrating the various products under the Ferodo umbrella, while focusing on the brand’s history. Ferodo is the brainchild of Henry Frood, who started experimenting with brake pads in Derbyshire garden shed towards the end of the 19th-century. His first creations were developed for horse and carts and by 1897 he opened his first factory, manufacturing brake pads for omnibuses and the then novel ‘autocar’. We shot the image at a racing circuit - paying homage to Ferodo’s - historic association with motorsport - and used ‘horsepower’ as a mechanism to bond Ferodo’s history with the function of its brake pads.
In 1965 the FBI, Scotland Yard and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police united to track down a most-wanted criminal by broadcasting his mug-shot via the Early Bird satellite. Little was thought of it and then, one day after the broadcast, a boat repairman contacted the FBI headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, claiming that he had done some repair work on the most wanted criminal’s vessel. Georges LeMay – the mastermind behind Canada’s biggest bank robbery – was, in fact, living on a 43-foot yacht. LeMay had evaded police since 1961 and was enjoying a playboy lifestyle. Georges LeMay admitted who he was and on arrest said: “Isn’t that something…it took a satellite to catch me.” This image also featured in the SES exhibition.
This was part of a series for spark plug manufacturer Champion. The caption does all the work in this image. And the full stop drives that home. One can think of a spark plug as the ultimate catalyst, hence the strap-line: Everything. Starts. Here.
SES Satellite Leasing Ltd - the world’s largest satellite operator - commissioned an exhibition of black and white art photographs. The brief was to capture the history of telecommunications, from the first telegraph to the cutting edge, lithium-powered satellites of today. SES wanted text to explain each historical illustration in the exhibition. This image tells the story of Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone. In 1876 Bell spilled battery acid over his trousers so he screamed for his assistant, Watson, who was in the next room. This message - unbeknown to Bell - was the very first telephone call. Bell’s panic was relayed not by shouting but through the telephone line to the next room.