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 (some day 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
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