The automotive industry is process driven, and industrial design is no different. However, the vast majority of publications about cars miss this….
The lead designer is ‘head of studio’.
This person manages all the design projects, which frequently happen in parallel – facelifts, new models, and ‘concept cars’. The latter are used to fill space between model announcements and to manage company design theme changes ahead of new product launches.
Under the head of studio are two distinct teams – one for the exterior and one for the interior. Each team has many designers, along with clay modellers, materials experts, economists and more. These are then sub-divided into project specific groups.
The master package is the data that connects the interior design to the exterior design, which is an interactive process. Once the overall concept is firmed up, this data then feeds the large number of engineers who create component and sub-assembly designs. From this tooling, jigs and components are made. Billions of dollars are spent enabling a design to become a vehicle for sale.
Industrial design is a blend of art, sculpture and engineering. Each industrial designer is tasked with setting a design which will be attractive at launch (anywhere from 18 months to 7 years later) through to the end of the model life (anywhere from 4.5 years to 14 years after the design is finished). This is literally what the automotive company relies on to make the business work.
Manual sketching is still used for rapid scoping, but often the whole process can be captured virtually, making data transfer to the engineering teams more reliable as well as faster. However, it is not uncommon to make scale or full-size models of the design to optimise the way light interacts with the shape (there are still limits with VR, but these are narrowing).
You can see ‘penned’ does not really feature, and interior design is as important as exterior design, along with the overall theme. Every single industrial designer, no matter how apparently insignificant, is a very special person working at the very heart of their company.
