The Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild (FBCG) was a youth outreach program long before corporate America invented the idea. The FBCG was a talent search (95%), a corporate recruiting tool, and a highly successful PR program. First and foremost, the Guild helped identify those young men (ages 11-20) with innate aesthetic design skills and abilities – people who GM could hire (someday in the future) to design the exteriors and interiors of their automobile products.
Many Guildsmen were inspired by the program to study car design at one of several professional design schools at the time (e.g., Pratt Institute of Art and Design, Art Center College of Design, Center for Creative Studies, Rhode Island School of Design, and Illinois Institute of Technology, Institute of Design) using their Guild college scholarship money. In addition, promising talented students could receive supplemental scholarships from the Big 3. The overall Guild strategy was: scholarships enable education, this leads to opportunity and subsequently jobs. For many, their auto design jobs turned into auto design and many reached managerial and executive design positions.
With a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering (BSME) or Industrial Design (BSID) with his portfolio in-hand, GM, Ford and Chrysler hired the Guildsmen to design cars. I came to Detroit with a BSME degree in Engineering, and $850 in Guild cash awards, to work in the automotive industry designing cars, but focused on engineering issues rather than aesthetics issues.
I was a Design Engineer at GM’s Ternstedt Division, worked at a drafting board or lofting table, with a GE Time Share computer and worried about mechanical design, function, manufacturing, reliability and cost issues. I was in heaven as this was my dream job. I was enabled to dream about this job because I was Guildsman. The Guild was part of the Golden Age of Automobile Design and inspired to pursue their dreams as an Engineer or Industrial Designer.
Guildsman, John Jacobus
Interesting Facts about the historic Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild (1930-1968)
Time Frame: 1930 to 1968 (excluding the run up to and WWII years (1938 to 1945))
Street Name: “Fisher Body Design Contest”
Sponsor: General Motors Corporation, Fisher Body Division, Advertising and Public Relations Division
Scale models they designed and built
Hand-crafted Miniature model Napoleonic Coaches 1930-37, 1946 and 1947. Technical model building. Blueprints & plans. Popular among the Tom Brokow’s “Greatest Generation.” Craftsmanship graded on objective and subjective criteria.
Hand-crafted 1/12 scale model “Dream Cars” 1937, 1945 – 1968. Scratch-build from ordinary household items coasting a few dollars. General specifications, tested aesthetic and workmanship skills and abilities, graded on “Design” and “Craftsmanship” based in objective and subjective criteria.
Contestants
Junior Division contestants – 11 to 15 years old (later expanded to 11-15).
Senior Division contestants 16 to 19 years old (later expanded to 16-20).
Popularity
10 Million boys and young men enrolled during the 31 year history.
Annual number of enrollees ranged from 100,000/year to 500,000/year over the life of the program. Enrollees were new and had never entered a model. After entering their first model, they were called a “Guildsman.”
Millions saw the top scholarship winning scale models at Motorama’s, Parades of Progress venues, in department store displays and newspapers/magazines.
FBCG generated 1 million inquires annually.
Quantity of Model Entries
One-quarter (1/4) to one-half (1/2) of one-percent [0.25 % to 0.50 %] of all enrollees actually designed, built and entered a model in the Fisher Body Design Contest. For the average enrollee the Probability (p) of entering a model was p = 0.0025 to 0.0050.
Total of 27,000 models (coaches and cars) were made from scratch over the life of the program) of which about 3,500 were coaches and 23,000 were model cars.
Incentives
Approximately 400 college scholarships were awarded.
Total value of Scholarships awarded = $992,000
Thousands won state level cash awards.
Total value of state cash awards = $1,408,000
Total Value of Scholarship/Cash awards = $2,400,000.
Program Promotion
To promote the program Guild management printed and mailed millions of copies of enrollment kits, as well as “Guildsman” magazines (1930-1937), “Guild News” (1946-1953) or the “Guildsman” (1954-1968) – the quarterly newsletters.
The Guild had a team of Field Representatives who annually visited schools across America to make trophy presentations to the winners and their school. Millions of enrollment cards were collected from kids who wanted to build a model and win a scholarship.
Hundreds of local newspapers across the country annually ran stories about the hometown winner in the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guilds.
Benefits to General Motors
In 1956, GM estimated that the Guild was the primary source of their designers.
In 1957, 35% of GM designers were Guildsmen.
In 1960, 47 Guildsmen were employed at GM Styling (later called GM Design Staff), GM Tech Center – these designers actually design the new GM automobile products.
In 1980, 25 Guildsmen were still working at GM Design Staff for a 1947 Guildsmen named Charles M. “Chuck” Jordan.
Guildsmen across America filled the ranks of the burgeoning field of Industrial Design.
SOURCE: from Gilmore-Guild Exhibition Catalogue, as well as modified and updated information from the Fisher-Guild books (2005 and 2012).