Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) chose Richard Earl to be their closing keynote speaker at this year's national conference in Phoenix, Arizona [link below details speakers]. 

Interestingly enough, the following phone conversation was why IDSA director, Frank Tyneski, selected Richard:

A friend as well as someone who's become a center-of-influence on my Harley Earl project, Russell Flinchum, is a design curator, author and critic and is perhaps best known for his detailed 1997 biography titled, Henry Dreyfuss: The Man in the Brown Suit. Russell and I have spoken many times on industrial design history and on the long standing IDSA organization established in 1950 and one day in April, 2008 Russell said, "Richard, why don't you call the new director of the IDSA, Frank Tyneski, I met him at a recent design conference and he'd like what you are doing." 

So in early May, Frank Tyneski and I had a dynamic phone conversation lasting over two hours. I told him all about the untold story of Harley Earl and this is when Frank extended a warm offer to be a speaker at the upcoming IDSA national conference. Here's one of the things he said in our initial conversation, "Richard, not only do you have the charm and splendor of a great bonfire story teller, targeted to our audience of 800 attending designers, but you speaking at this event will no doubt further enrich the historic perception of our audience on one of America's greatest contemporary artists."

In early June Frank got back to me and said, "With fascination, I checked out and confirmed everything we originally talked about on Harley Earl's back story and milestones, and we'd like to officially invite you to participate in IDSA's National Conference and would love for you to be our closing keynote speaker." Well, of course I was thrilled to hear this and practically fell off my chair with delight knowing exactly what a wonderful opportunity this was to take Harley Earl's American icon story to the next level by further legitimizing it in front of such an illustrious crowd of designers. Frank went on saying, "the 12-years of research you've done on your grandfather's life and work opens up a kettle of fresh questions and a range of great new design oriented historical topics to unfold at our conference. From Harley Earl being the first million-seller artist, his first creating Detroit's dependency on design, and your for the most part, fleshing out the behind-the-scene parts of this giant corporate design-engineer impresario being the central character responsible for making GM, via DESIGN, the largest company of the 20th century is a real breakthrough. This is going to awaken more interest in this renaissance man's unique historical portrait and properly locate him in the strata of today's modern worlds of business, art and design."

2008 - June 20-22 / Carlisle EventsÔ bills itself as "the world’s largest presenter of collector car, truck and motorcycle entertainment" and the All-GM Nationals weekend thrills thousands of enthusiastic fans. This East Coast extravaganza has religiously taken place for decades of time now and one of the weekend's attractions will be speaking presentations made by Richard Earl on one of America's most famous designs, the Buick Y-Job, which will be at the event. As many car savvy people know, Harley Earl's Y-Job is a one of America's national design treasures and is generally accepted as, "the world's first concept car." Click link, below, for info and event highlights:

2008 - Jan., 15-19 / Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale, Arizona (America's Largest Car Collector Auction) in mid-January. Richard spoke to the audience (approx. 14,000) as well as to the live broadcast of SPEEDCHANNEL TV on, "magnitude of the motoramic masterpieces created by Harley Earl and the automotive design art form he originally introduced and how this one man's design legacy will impact future auto world."

2006 - Jan., 20-24 / Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale, Arizona. Richard was brought out to the B-J event to be the spokesperson/curator of the Harley Earl art form and also represent a couple of this designer's most famous motoramic masterpieces. Both times the Designer-Earl vehicles were on the block [the Motorama Show Car, "Bonneville Special" and the unique "Futurliner" transporter bus] Richard would vocally deliver his viewpoint to the audience as to why his grandfather was one of America's greatest contemporary artists and why his specially designed cars were so valuable and/or historically important, like "national treasures." The thousands of enthusiastic live bidders, participants and SPEEDCHANNEL TV fans watching the Barrett-Jackson Auction certainly concurred, for these two works of art or "motoramic masterpieces" as Richard calls them, quickly sold for a combined total of over $6.8-million dollars in the next 20 minutes. "It happened fast, and each time I was right up there standing next to Craig Jackson when all the fireworks (crazy bidding frenzy) took place to buy rare works of art by Harley Earl."

While at this year's Barrett-Jackson event, Richard also played a TV personality role in the SPEED CHANNEL'S "On The Block" series which was a behind-the-scenes filming by this network of the 2006 Barrett-Jackson experience. Richard played no small part and was featured in four of the TV episodes of this popular SPEED CHANNEL show.  

Watch reel footage of how winning bidder fended off so many attacks to own work of art by Harley Earl

2005 - Jan., 25-29 / Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale, Arizona. Richard represented the seller of a one-of-a-kind custom designed creation by Harley Earl, the motoramic 1954 Oldsmobile F-88 masterpiece, which sold for a then record price of $3,200,000. Richard's poignant words, on the block right before the car was to be auctioned, to the audience sparked more intensity in a violent bidding war that ensued. It was a memorable moment in the world of motoramic masterpieces by Harley Earl.

2001-2004 - For a few years, Richard succeeded at rallying key car execs at GM in Detroit on their rich design history. Vocally presenting his research findings on the untold Harley Earl story to legions of McCann-Erickson advertising execs and Buick brand managers, Richard's idea went on to light a fire under a powerful new GM exec, Bob Lutz, and he fast-tracked the Harley Earl TV ad campaign into reality. "It was amazing, for GM is legendarily slow moving, but Bob Lutz quickly pushed this new idea through to align Buick's live spokesman, Tiger Woods, alongside Harley Earl in the all-new TV ads filmed by leading Hollywood director, Tony Scott," said Richard Earl who was acting as a consultant and who originally signed the legal contract, to start the ad campaign. Richard continued saying, "the agreement allowed GM's Buick brand, and their advertising agency McCann-Erickson, the legal right to use 'Harley Earl's name, likeness and image' for a 5-year period. Over $260,000 million dollars was spent on the Earl advertising campaign during its lifespan." 

On set making Harley Earl Buick TV ads, Hollywood director Tony Scott & Tiger Woods 

2001 - Wayne State University - Detroit, Michigan. Spoke and made a visual presentation in the Art Department on the new Official Harley Earl Website on America's Automotive Design Legacy and discussed with students the impact of Designer-Earl in the worlds of art and design. 

1999- Kettering University - in Flint, Michigan. Made a visual presentation and spoke to upcoming art, design and engineering students on the Automobile Design profession's unique rise. Professor Richard Scharchburg, for which this university's archives are now named after, was an avid fan of Harley Earl and contracted the traveling Harley Earl Photo Exhibit to travel to Flint to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of this university’s extensive Automotive Archives collection.   

1999 General Motors Design - within the famous GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. After Chrysler, this traveling Harley Earl Photo Exhibit was displayed front-and-center inside GM Design so many designer/engineers could draw inspiration from Earl's works of art.

1997 Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum - Richard spoke to a renowned group of designers during a Knoll Design Symposium taking place at Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. At this museum, he was also the curator to a Automotive Hollywood, A Tribute to Harley Earl photo exhibit which exclusively debuted during the design symposium. Afterwards, this museum quality photo exhibit was expanded and then traveled to other art and design centers. 

Richard at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1997 when GM Design brought LeSabre to the very first design exhibit displaying works of art by Harley J. Earl.

1995 Corvettes of Carlisle  - Carlisle, Pa. Richard was invited to be a dignitary at this event (largest Corvette Show in the World). Being his first time to attend "Corvettes of Carlisle," he represented Harley Earl being the, "Father of the Corvette."

1995 National Corvette Museum (NCM) Bowling Green, Ky. Richard also traveled to Bowling Green and attended many of this museum's "first year functions." Working to promote the new NCM that had just opened to the public in the summer of 1994, Richard traveled with NCM PR rep., Tammy Haddock, to Houston, Tx. At the Sam Houston Corvette Club event, Richard did one of his first speaking presentations on Early Corvette History in front of an enthusiastic audience of Vette fans.  

1995 - Malcohm Konner Chevrolet in Paramus, New Jersey. For the July 4th weekend, Corvette engineer, Zora Arkus Duntov, invited Richard Earl to come to this Corvette Show. This is when Zora Duntov passed the baton to Richard, because Zora fully understood everything on why Harley J. Earl was the true, Father of the Corvette. This was Zora's way of showing respect to the proud papa of the Corvette World. This was the first time Richard got to witness his grandfather's huge Corvette Phenomena by sitting next to Zora and signing autographs for the many attending Corvette fans seeking out Zora's and Richard's autograph together. Before this time, nobody had ever asked him to sign his moniker. So, Richard never forgot the moment...and to this day still understands how, "1995 was a big year for me because it's when I started researching my grandfather's story. I quickly found out Harley Earl was a fantastic role model; not just for myself, but for most people in general. Plus, many of my unique experiences in life, I can directly attribute to going down Harley Earl's road! "