All Designers articles – Page 36
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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.
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Design Review: Yanfeng Visteon Q-e concept
One of the interesting aspects of attending motor shows is seeking out the lesser known - but equally fascinating - concepts from the suppliers and consultants to the major manufacturers. A recent example of this was the Yanfeng Visteon Q-e concept shown at Auto China 2010 in Beijing last month. ...
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Essay: Retrospection
In the wake of Mays' departure, Audi took another step towards its Auto Union heritage with the fabulous Rosemeyer concept of 2000. Of course, much of the surfacing came from the TT, but the overall shape of the Rosemeyer is unique and the front graphic has now been successfully translated ...
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Essay: Retrospection
Hommage, reinterpretation, retrofuturism, learning from the past. Whatever you call it, retrospection has been a defining movement of car design over the past two decades. Touted as forging identity, this trend has been criticized as unoriginal, yet the success of numerous models recently spawned by it contends the forward-looking principles ...
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Design Review: Detroit Show Stands
Car Design News first looked in detail at the influence of pavilions and manufacturer stands at the Frankfurt Motor Show last year and how the industry, in general, has been quite slow capitalize on this potentially massive means of communication. Last month's North American International Auto Show was evidence that ...
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Design Review: Renault Captur concept
The Captur's interior is, if anything, even more of a treat than its exterior. Again carbon-fiber is a major structural material - the front seat frames mirroring the roof in mutual appreciation. And it's the seating that grabs your attention as soon as you put your hand up to the ...