All Designers articles – Page 32
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Designing the car of the future
Design is still far from having lost its ability to surprise us. In mature markets, far more than owning a vehicle suited for everyday uses in line with how society is changing, the search for differentiation is pushed to the extreme: personalization is getting a little stronger every year based ...
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Design Review: Seat Altea
Other neat touches on the Altea include the hidden clap-hands wipers and a second, hollow parcel tray in the trunk. The interior also keeps the spirit of the original, with a high but sporty seating position and centre console shape that apes the grille outline in a similar fashion to ...
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Design Review: Seat Altea
The new SEAT Altea acts as a classic case study in how a new production model can be successfully developed from a concept series, to give it an extra 'edge' in the public's perception. The final production car, premiered at Geneva, looks unchanged from the Altea Prototipo concept shown at ...
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Design Review: GMC Granite concept
Entrance to the interior is through a set of barn-style pillarless doors that provide a conceptual twist on the new Opel Meriva's innovative set-up. (That car sits on a similar wheelbase, but retains conventional B-pillars for reasons of structural rigidity).
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Design Review: GMC Granite concept
Even iconic brands have difficulty expand beyond the design parameters that brought them their success. You need only witness Mini's growing pains as it attempts to enter the SUV crossover segment with the Countryman for proof of that. For a brand like GMC, whose model line is based on mildly ...
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Design Review: Lexus IS
The old IS200/300 was a simple concept, clearly targeted at the BMW 3 Series: a sporty, compact executive car with a straight-six engine and RWD, available in sedan or sporty wagon format. This new model is a much more complex product, in some ways more mainstream, in others more sophisticated and focused. The new design direction is meant to express three fundamental elements of the Lexus ‘L-Fin
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Design Essay: Digital Design
Outside of the car design community there's a popular misconception that cars are designed by computers. If you look around a modern car design studio it is easy to see how this misconception could occur: the traditional image of a design studio has rows of draughting tables with manual sketching ...
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Chris Bangle: The future of auto design; the purpose of life
As part of the recent graduation exhibition at Umea Institute of Design, Chris Bangle was invited to give the keynote address. Given that the theme for the event was change, it's difficult to think of a speaker better qualified to pass on their insights to a new generation of designers.
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Design Review: Skoda Yeti
Yeti is the Tibetian word for 'magical creature' and the name given to the mythical large ape or 'abominable snowman' first thought to have been sighted in the Himalayas eighty years ago, which ever since has eluded a verifiable sighting. A strange name to give a concept car perhaps, but ...
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Design Essay: Designing For Mash-ups
MASH-UP: 1. A musical genre which consists of the combination of the music from one song with the acapella from another. Typically, the music and vocals belong to completely different genres and strive for musical epiphanies that add up to more than the sum of their parts. 2. A website ...
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Design Essay: Interior Texture Trends - Europe vs USA
The use of texture can go beyond mere coverage and move into a way of creating inexpensive accents like the production Dodge Magnum to highlight the vent surround or the Jeep Liberty on the center stack. Even more innovative is the Mazda Sassou Concept car from this year's Frankfurt show ...
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Design Essay: Interior Texture Trends - Europe vs USA
The texture on car interior components is something few of us consider much - as practising designers or car users. On injection molded parts grain was originally added to the surface of a tool to hide any molding issues. Now, with greater interest on interior design, the awareness of the ...
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Design Review: Mitsubishi i
At the rear, the 2003 'i' concept featured a bubble-like rear profile with a split rear window, not unlike an Audi A2. On the final car this has become simpler and more vertical. The doors on the production car have also been given a couple of subtle horizontal feature lines ...
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Design Review: Mitsubishi i
Mitsubishi Motor Corporation is one of those companies that is difficult to pigeonhole design-wise: it's a company with a very wide model range but little unity in design. There are several disparate centres of gravity in the Mitsubishi range, from totally orthodox sedans such as the Lancer, Carisma and Galant ...
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Driven: Range Rover Evoque
As Sam Livingstone opines in his review of the latest Porsche 911, we are in a period of car design consolidation, with the new 911 the ultimate expression of a slightly suffocating trend.
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Design Review: Ford Shelby GR - 1
Ford Motor Company design chief J Mays introduces the Shelby. Click for larger imagesTHE Sketch2004 Shelby Cobra ConceptShelby GR-1 designers Matthew Hill (interior), George Saridakis (exterior)Photos: Brett Patterson, Marc Beauregard, FordWhat makes a good car design? One that sells well? One that car designers rate highly? One that you ...
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Design Review: Renault Modus
Similarly, its Down-Road-Graphic is generic Renault with MPV proportions, slightly cute lamps and a benignly smiling lower grille aperture.
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Design Review: Renault Modus
The first Renault to bear Patrick le Quement's stamp was the Twingo - a very small but very spacious, very charming but very clever 3-door monospace design. It was the first 'sub-B' car in Europe to share its slightly bigger sibling's platform, and proves the value of Renault's more advanced ...
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Design Review: Yanfeng Visteon Q-e concept
The front face is typical of current trends in China. A slim band links the sharply-stepped ‘dropped' headlamps to create a broad monographic, with an underlying wide grille beneath the lamps that binds the whole face together - the IAT Crosswind II has a similar DRG, for instance.
