Great Art - Great Area
South Shore Line poster series promotion brings Northwest Indiana to life.
By: Mark Skertic

Walk into most any corporate office in Northwest Indiana and you will spot a South Shore Line poster.

The framed, 1920s-style works hang in lobbies, conference rooms and the chief executive's office. With their colorful, retro looks they do more than advertise the commuter line and the area it serves. The posters are shorthand way of telling visitors that people in the region are proud of their area. The Hoosier Prairie, the neighborhood below a landmark Gary watertower, the dunes-they are among dozens of images capture in the popular poster series.

Now, the effort behind the poster series is coming into view

John Davies helped develop the series when he was with the Northwest Indiana Forum, a regional economic-development corporation. He's now giving some of the area's leaders a chance to tell why they sponsored some of the works. The 30-second spots are featured on "Region Watch," a television show Davies hosts that runs on local PBS channel 56 and is rebroadcast on local cable access.

"These posters brought our region to life, now the CEOs who sponsored those posters are telling why they did this," Davies says.

Barrett Hatches, CEO of local gas and electric utility NIPSCO, appears in the first spot. He delivers his message atop one of the large dunes that hug southern Lake Michigan. The poster that Northern Indiana Public Service Co. Sponsored, one of the most popular in the South Shore series, was originally released in 1997.

From the start, the poster campaign has been a "a natural fit as part of NIPSCO's support for economic development," Hatches explains. The poster was a way to highlight "one of the many strengths of Northwest Indiana."

The next spot features U.S. Steel's George Babcoke, general manger at Gary Works. Standing before on of the massive oxygen furnaces at the Gary steel mill. "From their living rooms viewers will actually be taking a tour of the region," Davies says.

NIPSCO, U.S. Steel and the Northwest Indiana Forum sponsor the ad series. Hammond's Design Studio 303 donated design work for the print versions of the spots. They will run in space donated by The Times of Northwest Indiana. "They all donated to this effort because they realize the strength of these spots," says Davies, who helped revive the poster series in the 1990s. The series was based on the original South Shore Line posters that appeared in the 1920s.

Artist Mitchell Markovitz,, art director for the poster series, has said emulating the posters with new material was always the goal of the campaign. "The whole stunt was always to make new old posters," he says.

Davies, who now does public relations, has remained closely involved with the poster series. "No other region in the world has a marketing campaign like this one," he says. "This is a wonderful area and these posters are a wonderful inventory of our region."