Gearbox metal drinkware arranged with automotive parts in a desert scene
Creative Direction · Product System · AI Visualization

Gearbox

Gearbox started as a product idea I couldn't shake. Premium metal drinkware built on the visual language of the garage: pistons as wine caddies, engine geometry translated into glassware forms.

I sketched the collection in 2017 and waited years for the right tools to tell the full story. In 2025 I came back to it with generative imaging and treated AI like a production studio. I art directed every scene: lighting, camera angle, product placement, reflections on metal. The work is mine. The tools handled what a shoot budget couldn't. Everything else, the naming system, logo, color, patterns, iconography, packaging architecture, and brand voice, was built the way it has always been built.

What came out the other side is a complete lifestyle brand. A collectible product line. A scalable identity. A world you can step into. Gearbox is still a concept, but it doesn't look like one anymore.

ROLE

Creative Direction · Brand Identity · Industrial Design

PROJECT

Self-Initiated Concept

INDUSTRY

Lifestyle · Drinkware · Automotive

DELIVERABLES

Identity · Packaging · Product · Campaign

TOOLS

Brand Design · AI-Directed Visualization

FIRST ATTEMPT · 2017

The Original Line

The problem was never the product. It was the world around it. Without physical prototypes and a real shoot budget, I couldn't build the lifestyle campaign this brand needed: vintage cars, poolside scenes, bar setups, the kind of imagery that makes drinkware feel like culture instead of inventory.

Gearbox metal drinkware collection product shot

IDENTITY · LOGO DEVELOPMENT

Brand System

Gearbox wordmark in compressed industrial lettering
Gearbox logo embossed on brushed metal
Gearbox pattern and color system swatches
Gearbox Pantone palette and typography specimen
Gearbox Pantone color chips
Gearbox brand collateral and packaging mockup

STRATEGIC INSIGHT

Gearbox feels like one brand because every decision points the same way. The names come from the garage. The palette reads like a parts catalog: matte black, raw aluminum, oxidized bronze. The type is compressed and tight, set like it was stamped into metal rather than printed. None of it is decoration. It all describes the same world, which is usually the thing a concept is missing.

PROJECT IMPACT

01

Identity System

02

Product Naming

03

Product Design

04

Packaging

05

Lifestyle Campaign

REVISITED · 2026 · BATCH 001

The Foundry

Gearbox metal drinkware collection with product names
Gearbox metal barware concept sketches
Gearbox metal drinkware collection on a red car hood

The concept looked like a concept. Then it didn't.

Gearbox metal drinkware close-up in warm gold light

MARTINI KIT · BAR TOOLS

The Shift Kit

Gearbox bar tools made from car parts

Precision Served.

Gearbox car-part tools opening bottles at a bar

TITANIUM ICE CUBES

The Cold Start

Gearbox titanium ice cubes with branding
Gearbox metal drinkware filled with drinks, overhead view

WINE CADDY

The Bracket

Two hands toasting with Gearbox piston glasses
Two hands toasting with Gearbox piston glasses

PACKAGING · BRANDING

Packaging System

Gearbox metal drinkware packaging system
Gearbox packaging pattern of product-marker icons

Pattern became the catalog: a visual inventory of what exists, what's next, and what still deserves to be built.

Gearbox packaging pattern development mockups
Gearbox The Piston packaging design
Gearbox product with its packaging box
Gearbox packaging boxes stacked with piston products

ART DIRECTION · AI VISUALIZATION

Lifestyle Campaign

Gearbox metal drinkware in a garage-bar lifestyle scene

The visual language of the garage, translated for the bar.

Two hands toasting with Gearbox piston glasses
Two hands toasting with Gearbox piston glasses
Two hands toasting with Gearbox piston glasses
Two hands toasting with Gearbox piston glasses
Two hands toasting with Gearbox piston glasses
Gearbox car-rim ice bucket and cigar lounge scene
Gearbox nightlife collage with a piston DJ turntable
Gearbox poolside rooftop party scene
Gearbox flask and titanium ice cube close-up
Gearbox drinkware with a red lowrider in the desert

PROJECT CLOSE

Gearbox is still a concept. It just stopped looking like one.

The point was never to fake a product. It was to show the brand thinking, from a name stamped like a part to a world you would actually want to drink in. That is the work, whether the tool is a pencil, a camera, or a model.

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