Process Archives

Repurposing the Pen: Why Automotive Design Needs an Intellectual Tradition

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 16:11:30 +0000

There are isolated examples of critically-engaged vehicle design, but these can only be critiqued on individual merit and not as part of a broader discourse. Robert Dooley asks how we might all contribute to a more reflective discipline. Automobiles are one of, if not the, most technically advanced consumer products. Automotive designers are a distinct subset of the industrial design family, trained to create complex, highly resolved three-dimensional forms for volume manufacturing. Creating ‘the new thing’ is the source of […]

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Vehicle Product Planning Needs to Adapt to Meet the Demands of a New Era

Fri, 05 Mar 2021 10:00:00 +0000

“Let’s review the business case”, says the vice president of Vehicle Manufacturer. The business development person opens an Excel spreadsheet with 14 tabs and reviews the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) and PEST (Political, Economic, Social and Technological) analysis. Armed with a commerce degree and an MBA from Prestige University, they worry that the Mean Forecast Error on sheet 3 may be off by -1.5, which could screw up the MSE (Mean Squared Error)… In that same meeting, a […]

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Alpine GTA – Designer Creates the Ultimate Driving Machine

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Everyone, regardless of profession, should endeavor to practice their skills outside of the daily grind. Even more so if your job depends on being creative. As human beings, we thrive on knowledge and learning and, as designers, practicing and creating personal projects provides an outlet to develop something without constraints; something to push your own limits of creativity. Designer Arseny Kostromin did exactly that with his Alpine GTA personal design study. Before Renault announced that its Renault F1 Team would […]

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Designing Movement that Inspires: How Designers Redefined the Kia Brand

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Design is one of the most important aspects of any brand. This goes well beyond simply designing the products. It’s a fundamental understanding of what the brand is and what it aspires to become, not just for the shareholders but in the messages that are conveyed to the end-users, the brand’s customers. Designer Ray Ng outlines how creative collaboration redefined the Kia brand. in·spi·ra·tion | \ ˌin(t)-spə-ˈrā-shən: the act of drawing in a divine influence or action on a person […]

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How the Design Medium Affects Design – It’s Not What You Do, It’s the Way You Do It

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 10:00:00 +0000

Design is influenced by the medium used to create it to a much greater extent than most designers will admit. How have the techniques of car design affected the fashions of car aesthetics, and how can a designer use different tools to improve their creativity? When I was a young child I wanted to be a Lego designer. The enlightenment that designing cars was what I actually wanted to do came after realizing that I pretty much only built cars […]

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ISD Rubika 2020 Degree Show – The Visualization Masters

Wed, 13 Jan 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Google, Toyota, Louis Vuitton and Tata Motors walk into a digital room. Welcome to the ISD degree juries. Every year the Institut Supérieur de Design in Valenciennes, France, holds its year-end degree show. It is arguably the best place for OEMs to recruit digital artists and 3D modelers. The main school is in the north of France with a sister school in India. Each student must present their work to industry professionals and in English. This presentation counts for 30% of their final grade. The added difficulty […]

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The AI Car Designer – Can Artificial Intelligence Design a Car?

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 09:00:32 +0000

If Artificial Intelligence designed a car, could it be a better car designer than a human one? Designer Karolina Dabrowski takes a deep dive… Creativity is a slippery word. It can be found everywhere; in the way a mathematician solves a mathematical problem, an engineer comes up with unconventional solutions, or a squirrel getting creative to break into the bird feeder. The latter is maybe a less promising example of creativity. But what exactly is creativity? And can an algorithm […]

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Inside Volvo’s Design Studio and Design Processes

Tue, 10 Nov 2020 08:25:09 +0000

Volvo Design recently created a video for the Autostyle Design Competition demonstrating the design processes that take place in the design studio in Gothenburg, Sweden. In it, Volvo Head of Design Robin Page speaks with Head of UX Design Thomas Stovicek, Head of Interior Design Lisa Reeves, and Head of Color & Materials Claudia Braun as well as Senior Exterior Designer T. Jon Mayer and Color and Materials designers Linnea Karlsson and Erik Aleby about the Volvo 360c concept in […]

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CGI Visualization is the Future, and the Future is Now

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 08:00:22 +0000

The clock said 23h00 but at least I finished my bike. I got the materials, the lighting and the set ready. I clicked ‘render’ and went home. I suspected it would take Alias a few hours to calculate the 1280 x 1024 image I asked for. I came back to the Tinkertoy building the next morning. In the computer lab, I was greeted with evil stares and for good reason. When I turned on the monitor the computer was still rendering 12 hours later, […]

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Ambitions of Car Design – Designing For Markets, Designing for Customers

Fri, 28 Feb 2020 09:00:16 +0000

A young, enthusiastic car design student, hard at work sketching wild and wonderful ideas — like every car designer really should — notices someone sneaking up behind his shoulder. It’s a senior designer in the studio where the young man is doing his internship. The senior designer leans over and whispers something below his breath: “So…you want to be a car designer, do you?” The young man would have loved to answer yes but, upon seeing the look in the […]

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Digital Tools – A Look Inside the 3D Modeling Process

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 12:29:00 +0000

A few years ago, Form Trends published an article citing clay modeling as ‘An Alternative Career‘ to traditional automotive sketch-and-render design. Times have changed. While many design studios still use clay in the development process, it is often only employed as a verification tool in the final stages before the design is ultimately signed off. Digital modeling is faster, more cost-effective and taking over in design studios worldwide. Senior Digital Modeling Manager Pierre-Paul Andriani walks us through these digital tools. […]

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Jaguar Opens New State-of-the Art Design Center

Wed, 23 Oct 2019 08:35:00 +0000

While the UK auto industry continues to be affected by the uncertainty of Brexit, Jaguar opened the doors of its all-new £500m design facility in Gaydon, inviting media to experience the six-step process that takes place within the confines of the normally secretive studio space. Designed by Bennetts Associates with input from Jaguar’s own design team, the new dedicated 12000 sq. meter design studio integrates the 280-member strong design team into one purpose-built creative space for the first time in […]

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