Sarah Edmands Martin

DESIGNER

Associate Professor
University of Notre Dame

Designer, artist, and scholar working at the intersection of visual communication design, critical fabulation, and media aesthetics. 


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UIC School of Design guest juror
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SARAHEDMANDS


Gladiator

Brand campaign, creative direction, packaging design, promotional material, environmental graphics 2015–2016
Creative direction, brand campaign development, and promotional materials for the intelligently engineered storage and organizational solution brand, Gladiator.    





Concept


Gladiator makes reliable and rugged organizational products, from heavy-duty cabinets and versatile shelving units to durable workbenches and customizable wall systems. This brand development, packaging design, and promotional materials empower both homeowners and professionals to reclaim their space, maximize functionality, and confidently tackle any task. Rooted in toughness and built for precision, Gladiator combines industrial strength with thoughtful design, ensuring every product not only withstands the demands of daily life but elevates it. 


brand campaign development
creative direction
publication design
product design
3D modeling
photography



increased product sales from 2015–2016
Client

Senior designer
Gladiator


Sarah Edmands Martin





















An essential part of a brand’s art direction is documenting new products. Using Whirlpool’s state-of-the-art photo studios in Benton Harbor, Michigan, my design team orchestrated and art directed photoshoots for new Gladiator products, ensuring each image authentically conveys the brand's rugged strength, premium quality, and thoughtful functionality. 
















Gladiator’s in-store advertising leverages bold visuals, clear messaging, and intuitive product demonstrations to immediately convey durability, quality, and versatility to customers. Our carefully designed displays effectively highlight real-world applications, ensuring customers can quickly envision how Gladiator solutions enhance their own spaces—ultimately driving both engagement and sales.








Trailer Activations


The Gladiator GarageWorks trailer is hitting activations across the country in 2016. The trailer will be outfitted as a retail-like product showcase, featuring new kits and product sets that support the start small strategy, ultimately driving admirers into the store so they can start getting their “it” together. 

Major activation sites
football tailgates monthly channel workshops
classic car shows





The Campaign Slogan


This Gladiator brand campaign, anchored by the playful slogan “Get Your ‘it’ Together,” masterfully blends typographic wit with product-centered humor to position the brand at the intersection of utility and personality. The sculptural representation of “it,” with its physically disjointed forms, especially the floating tittle of the “i,” becomes a clever metaphor for disorder and the need for organization, directly echoing Gladiator’s ethos as a storage and organization brand.

















The Gladiator Garage Sale “IT Kit” exemplifies a savvy extension of the brand’s identity, blending utilitarian function with cheeky, culturally resonant messaging. The packaging itself is a striking interplay of rough-hewn utility and graphic wit, employing a raw, industrial cardboard aesthetic paired with a gritty monochrome image of a garage scene that evokes both nostalgia and everyday chaos. The clever textual framing (“Someone else’s IT might be sitting in your garage”) extends the campaign’s playful manipulation of “IT,” transforming the mundane act of garage cleanup into an act of empowerment and discernment. The playful campaign initiative bridges product and narrative, offering consumers not just storage solutions but a humorous invitation to reimagine their relationship with their possessions.












The Gladiator brand extends seamlessly into the trade show environment by transforming its ethos of rugged utility and aspirational order into a fully immersive spatial experience. These 3D models show how a strategically designed booth functions as both a branded environment and a tactile invitation, bridging product display and lifestyle aspiration. Through bold, high-contrast messaging like “Create your perfect space,” the booth immediately communicates a promise of transformation, aligning with Gladiator’s larger campaign themes. By echoing the brand’s industrial aesthetic—diamond-plate surfaces, tool chests, and crisp modular lines, the booth becomes a microcosm of the Gladiator promise, converting passersby into participants in an aspirational narrative of control, customization, and mastery over one’s space.