To advertise the fact that Amtrak, America’s nationally owned railway, now offers free wi-fi services on 12 of its East Coast routes, Arnold DC agency in Arlington, Virginia, combined an iconic symbol of each regional route and the wi-fi signal. With creative direction by Mick Sutter and illustrations by Andrew Bannecker, the AmtrakConnect ad campaign kept text to a minimum and let the images speak for themselves.

While this marriage of location and wi-fi signal may seem simple, the challenge was to find the one image that people immediately associated with the region — e.g., Maine lobster, Philadelphia Liberty Bell, Adirondack mountains – and then make the wi-fi mark an integral part of the silhouetted image and not feel like a forced and clumsy “add-on.” This they did. Nice.