Location:	Elkhart, Indiana
Specialty:
Companies:	The Art Of Design
Experience:
WebSites:	www.taod.org
Bio:	The rise of rock 'n roll heralded my arrival in this world: 1964, September 21, to be exact. I made my grand entrance in the sleepy Midwestern town of Goshen, Indiana, population 13,700. It wasn't an out-of-the-ordinary occasion - intense labor, some loud yells no doubt, a few pushes (thanks Mom!) - and there I was. School, church and home were the circles of my life back then - like just about every other Midwestern kid, I guess. But while my contemporaries were embarking on stick figures in front of square houses bordered by wide swaths of blue sky and green grass, I was taking a somewhat different approach. They say my artistic talent was evident at an early age, and I was drawing long before I could spell. When I was about 9 years old, an older gentleman by the name of Ed Miller saw me doodling in church. Apparently, he was impressed because he bought me my first oil and watercolor set. He was always asking me to paint something for him. It didn't matter what - landscapes, trains, planes, seascapes - he wanted anything I could do. By the time I reached high school, I had started using an airbrush to paint t-shirts and murals - I even did the body work on my first car and helped paint it. If I had to pinpoint it, I guess I'd say my automotive illustrating goes back to the Etch-A-Sketch when I was 6. I loved drawing cars on that thing. During high school, I pursued two passions: art and skateboarding. With the latter, I was semi-pro and sponsored by Gordon & Smith (G&S) skateboards. I also attended a vocational school for commercial art. I won first place in a state contest and an honorable mention in a national. I liked to use lots of different media - automotive paint, watercolor, oils, acrylics, colored pencils, charcoal and chalk. I diligently learned how to work each medium into a piece of art I could be proud of. While still in high school, I was fortunate enough to do freelance illustrations for local van conversion companies and advertising agencies. After graduation, a place called Design Studios hired me. From there, I moved up the ladder, so to speak, and got out of art and into management. Six years later, I heard the call of the road and I hit it. I loaded up the car and headed out west - California was my destination. I figured I could pursue both my passions - art and skateboarding - full time in that sunny vale. I seemed to have found a niche in California, because in two years my distinctive, airbrushed, one-of-a-kind t-shirts were selling for around $100. My highest priced t-shirt sold at $250, with a jean jacket going for $600. Sweet. I was also getting a lot of illustration work from car show clients. I met with all the big firms: Hanna-Barbera, Universal Studios, Disney, Marvel Comics and Wallace Green Studios, where I did freelance airbrushing and layout work. I was impressed that these companies would meet with me even though I didn't have a college degree. After a couple years of constant sunshine - I actually missed the rain! - I headed back home to Indiana, where I still had my first house. With a brand new concept and an abundance of ideas of how airbrushing and murals could be taken to a new level, I started buying all the equipment I would need, while I labored away in my basement. After four years of working 40 to 50 hours at a "real" job, then another 40 to 50 hours per week working in my basement, I decided something had to go. You guessed it. I left my day job and went solo. Projects continued to come in and, with a desire to be the best, I decided to hire some help. But rather than hire too many people, I figured it was more cost-effective to keep purchasing faster computers and state-of-the-art equipment. Before long, I was running three computers: one printed copies of my designs, one cut vinyl stickers and one was used for designing. I soon earned a reputation as being very good and fast. A lot of my projects were radio station graphics on trade show displays and vehicles, t-shirt designs and airbrushed murals. As we began doing more custom paint, I traveled wherever I needed to go to get the work, such as at motorhome and boat factories. For local projects, we rented space at body and paint shops - a step that saved me from having to buy a building and increasing my overhead.   Around 1997, I started to work more on large offshore race and pleasure boats. After a couple years of painting these 47-foot boats by myself and with the help of two employees (still in my basement), I decided to hire a full-time painter. A very good, long-time friend of mine, Mark Hughes, came on board as my business partner. In 1998, I bought our first Dodge Viper in the hopes of changing its appearance through color, self-designed parts, and interior, suspension and engine mods. We were getting ready for the custom car that was to come - we just didn't know it yet.   The next few years saw us doing custom painting, design, radio station graphics, full paint jobs on Provost motorcoaches and boats, photo retouching, catalog layout, business cards, signs, murals, stencil cutting for other companies, and just about any other form of art. Then we decided it was time to get focused. We bought a 15,000-square-foot building in Elkhart, Indiana. For the most part, we tried to stop traveling and bring the projects to us.   We struggled for years to stay small and to fully understand what we were doing before doing it for our customers. With our new shop, we could now produce - with the help of up to 17 employees - the most outstanding murals large and small, the most fantastic custom paint and graphics, and the greatest automobile conversions. "Build it and they will come" became true. Also at the time, taglines began popping up in our minds: "At 200 mph, you have no friends," "Looks are everything," and "Can you handle the  attention?" These were all based on our customers' experiences with what we had created for them.   It may sound strange, but we felt we had come up with the chemistry to "steal time" by creating something so visually stimulating that people had to stop, look and ask questions. Hey, we didn't work so hard all those long late nights for just a paint job. No, we knew it was all for the art. And we knew it takes time to get the public to understand the massive effort that goes into applying changing pearl effects and gradients that fade color over a stretch of 40 feet and are not blotchy. We wanted our customers to understand that time costs money and, in the end, they would end up with something that no one else would have.   Since we started, we have done specialty work for every major motorcoach and boat company, and have unveiled our marketing ideas and designs to all major automotive companies through other companies. When a boat or motorcoach company is searching for a new look, they come to us to create it for them. Magazines have recognized this uniqueness and have placed many of our designs on their covers.   In the automotive field, we have been breaking ground for years, buying and driving many different cars from exotic to domestic, searching for cars that we could develop specialty items for, such as custom paint, carbon fiber panels, wings, splitters and ground effects. The experience of having these vehicles at our disposal was crucial in understanding the car designer's thought process. Feeling and testing the durability of different finishes, having the time over months to really understand what a designer was thinking when creating the original project - these are key points in developing something better.   We have begun using our acronym, TAOD, but it still very much stands for The "Art" of Design. These days, we use Sikkens paints and Akzo Nobel Chemical Company. We are also a dealer for HRE rims, TUBI exhaust, Corsa Exhaust, Asset-Iwatta and Tire Rack for rims and tires. Our expansion into these markets ensures that when we design a project, we take other top companies with us on our endeavors.   In the future, we would like to be known for the art of what we do, the art of taking care of customers, the art of creating a rim and tire package that perfectly fits the car, and the art of design to continually come up with new and different ideas - ideas that most people would never think of. In the end, we'd like to be known as the company that could do it all and do it correctly.   With TAOD where it is today, I can focus more on training and showing off more of the true art that inspired me so many years ago. Training others around the country in the unique styles I develop will continue to grow in importance for TAOD. We also will be retailing a distinctive line of apparel and car accessories, such as mats, carpets, interior items, and waxes and polishes. Yes, great things are in store for us and our customers.   I look forward to the people I will meet and all the stories I will have to share because of my art. Dean Loucks Artist in Residence
Video Features:
Print Features: