This Is Just A Charming Brochure For A Big Bus: Cold Start

I’m definitely a huge sucker for mid-century graphic design and illustration, and I came across a particularly charming example I’d like to share with you today. It’s from 1957, and it’s a brochure for a Büssing Trambus TU10. Now, what caught my eye were the really engaging and somewhat whimsical illustrations used in this simple two-color brochure, but what caught my mind, you see, is a question I’ve always had about appealing brochures like these for massive things like trambuses or garbage trucks or other similar heavy-duty equipment that is likely to only be bought by some municipality or town or something: who were these brochures for?

Before we get into that question, which I don’t think I have a good answer to, anyway, let’s just look for a moment at this brochure, and the bus itself.

Are you familiar with Büssing? Were you buying equipment for the public transportation systems of a European town between the 1930s and 1971? Take a moment to check if you may have forgotten, I don’t mind waiting. If so, then you likely already know that Büssing was one of the biggest bus and truck manufacturers, and you’ve probably already marveled at how the founder’s name, Heinrich Büssing, is somehow the perfect name for someone who makes buses? If his name had been Heinrich Sportzcar, would I be writing this about a brochure for an amazing little roadster?

But, that’s not how it played out, did it? Büssing made some of the first real full-sized buses – some sources say the Büssing III GL 6 was the world’s first full-sized bus, and while I’m not sure I completely agree, it’s telling. Anyway, let’s finally look at this Trambus TU10 brochure:

For one thing, look at that face, with all those deco-style chrome ribs! They really didn’t skimp on the chrome, did they? It’s almost a full grille there at that point, even if it doesn’t need one; now that I think about it, I’m not certain where the radiator is?

Anyway, it’s the illustration of the town in the background that caught my attention. It’s such a simple little drawing, clean confident lines, and great use of spot color and halftones and patterns. I imagine those were applied from these sort of transfer sheets that old designers used. Look at how that streetlight, done just in spot color and some repeating square pattern on the lens, feels like it’s in the foreground, and it’s so clean and reduced to its fundamental forms – it’s just fantastic. All of this is just prime graphic artist work of the time, masterful and casual all at once.

The other page of the brochure has a nice full shot of this huge trambus, and some good technical bits, like the “unterfloor” motor, which seems to be an inline-6 diesel, laid on its side, for a very compact package. The engine seems to be bolted to a six-speed transmission, too, it looks like?

Let’s get back to my unanswered question, though: who are these brochures for? They’re lovely and charming and feel like consumer-level things, but regular people aren’t buying trambuses. Is this the sort of thing that would be sent to, say, a purchasing manager for some mid-size German town? I guess good design is just good design, and maybe this helps it stand out from a big stack of bus brochures, but you’d think these would all be more, I don’t know, municipal? Business-like? No-frills?

They were probably requisitioned in some RFP or something like that, right? Some mayor wasn’t just walking down to the local Trambus Emporium and grabbing a stack of brochures? Were they? I don’t know how major bus purchasing in mid-century Europe worked at all, I’m realizing.

I have so much growing up to do.