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Automotive Industry

Design inspiration - for automobile designers - Cover Story

Automotive Industries, Dec, 2002 by John Peter

Raymond Lowey, known as "the father of industrial design," wasn't just influenced by what was around him, he also designed it. His creative genius brought us the Studebaker Avanti, S-1 locomotive, Coldspot refrigerator and red and yellow Shell logo. He understood the importance of design as a selling tool. He was quoted as saying "between two products equal in price, function and quality, the better looking will outsell the other."

But what is the secret to making something "better looking?"

That's the question that plagues automotive designers everyday. Constantly pressured to bring new and creative vision to the market, they often turn to the things around them for influence.

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Before pencil ever meets paper, the designer will pick our brain-take a tour through our psyche, in the hopes that knowing what kind of chair we sit in as we drink our favorite coffee will cover clues to what kind of car we will want to drive.

"Designers are naturally inquisitive," says Trevor Creed, senior vice president of Design for DaimlerCrysler.

Their designs can be influenced by just about anything from architecture to furniture design, bicycles to clothing to graphic arts. They subscribe to many magazines and attend such events as the color marketing seminar (held each year in California) and the High Point furniture show.

All of these inspirations go into designing automobiles that will appeal to a certain customer segment, build some kind of emotional attachment that makes tem desire that particular vehicle.

But what inspires those who design the things that inspire auto designers? We asked a few of tem and found that, in many ways, they mirror their auto designing counterparts.

Drawing Water

Spend an afternoon with Judd Law and Howard Montgomery and you might see your kitchen and bathroom faucets in a different light. Law manages the faucet design department for the Delta Faucet Co; Montgomery is the lead for faucets in Kohler's industrial design department.

Law says that the exciting aspect about being a designer in this industry is that you're designing a product that people interact with on a daily basis. "We're concerned with even the emotional side of it," Law says, "striving more and more to appeal to the senses--how these products are going to feel and work and sound. Tactile is extremely important, whether you're physically touching a handle or moving a spout, or how the water feels as it's coming out of the spout."

Relying heavily on Delta's marketing department to find niches in the marketplace, Law also partners with research groups and tracks trends independently through things like furniture shows and international gift fairs.

"There's a product manager that I work with here," Law says, "and he and I make a trip to a lot of the exotic car dealerships. We'll sit in the Audi TTs when they first come out and take a look at what the auto industry has that's really making a buzz. The automotive industry always offers a lot of passion."

Montgomery says process drives much of the final product at Kohler.

"Take the silhouette of a Christmas tree on its side," he says, "with the wide end on your left You start wide and move it in, then there are discussions and debates, the scope slightly changes and it goes out a bit You come back in again as you start to make some decisions and you're honing down on the process and design. All those concurrent issues with manufacturing, price points, etc. come into play and sometimes there's some vacillation and it steps out again. Then you've got to pull it back in and eventually you're going to get to the tip."

Montgomery says that at Kohler his group will often define certain design influences by looking within their own product portfolio, as well as industry trade shows.

"We attend the two major plumbing shows, the Kitchen and Bath International Show in Chicago, Ill., and the ISH in Frankfurt, Germany." Montgomery says. "Those two are very key in the industry design field.

"There are a lot of traditional elements that we look to, but we're not going to do a Thunderbird," he laughs. "That's a little different--pure retro. But we would definitely take certain ingenious elements, whether it be water delivery or plumbing vernacular, and hark back to that kind of period. We would definitely do that"

Not unlike the automakers, Kohler also does a fairly good amount of consumer research to really understand what the consumers want from their products. Montgomery says that a bathroom faucet is an integral part of the overall design of the bathroom and designers need to look at the entire bathroom as a whole. Designers also need to realize that in markets where the consumers are directly choosing the products, there's a need to have an emotional connectivity.

The initial design phase at both companies starts with brainstorming sessions and thumbnail sketches.

"Guys bring stuff in on cocktail napkins or toilet paper," Law says, "wherever an idea strikes you. You'll just throw down a few lines that nobody else will be able to interpret but it'll be enough to jog your memory."

Automotive Industry

Design inspiration - for automobile designers - Cover Story

Automotive Industries, Dec, 2002 by John Peter

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