Who are the car designers?
Greetings, dear readers!
Let's see what kind of people are, what their everyday life is, what they are guided by in their work, what difficulties they encounter and where they are looking for inspiration, what are similar and what are their differences.
Work on the new Ford GT
Many of us were great fans of drawing cars on the back of the school. And car designers, as a rule, started the same way, however, if you think that the skills to draw beautifully enough and you buried talent in the ground, then I will hurry to cool down your ardor - this is not all that a modern car designer needs.
Perhaps for some it will be a discovery, but the car design did not appear to make the eye of a person happy, but for filling the pockets of automakers. It's been a very short time since Henry Ford created an affordable and convenient car that everyone could afford, and his competitors from General Motors launched a mechanism that continues to this day. The head of the concern Alfred Sloan Jr. offered a concept that the car will be changed every year, and a powerful advertising company will convince the car owner that he definitely needs a new, more modern car. In a greater degree it concerned appearance.
The famous phrase of Henry Ford: "The car can be any color, if this color is black," was born not because of Ford's love for black, but only because painting all cars in one color significantly reduced the cost of the final product. Ford opposed the GM-imposed strategy, but in 1931, GM sales surpassed Ford's sales, despite the higher price, and Ford was forced to accept new conditions. Small car manufacturers could not afford an annual update, so they were soon forced to leave the market.
In the future, these rules of the game were adopted by all automakers first in America, and then all over the world. Of course, to date no automaker can afford to completely change the appearance of the car every year, because it happens once every 5-7 years with restyling somewhere in the middle.
For many years, the aim of car design was only to attract new customers and retain regular customers, but with the development of technologies and speeds, the requirements for cars also changed, which entailed another requirement for design - functionality. To fulfill this requirement, the designer must possess not only an excellent taste, but also scientific knowledge.
It is necessary to divide the design of the car into 3 parts: exterior design, interior design, as well as decoration and colors. In the process involved a large number of different professionals, the task of coordinating them, so that the product came out one-piece and sustained in one style, lies on the shoulders of the chief designer.
In the work on the exterior, there is also a supervising designer and a group of specialists who at the first stage present their sketches, and then more detailed drawings and drawings to management for approval. The resulting detailed digital model is embodied in a scale of 1: 1 from plasticine using a special machine. Sculptural plasticine - an indispensable material in this work, as it allows you to change individual parts in the process.
Creating Ford B-max
Stages of interior design of the car are the same as the exterior: sketches, a digital model, a model of plasticine. A front panel is created with instruments and controls, seats, door panels, the center console, the form of racks and so on. But here the main emphasis should be on ergonomics and passenger comfort. The location of all modern controls, multimedia systems and security systems is taken into account.
The department that selects materials and colors coordinates its activities with the other two, as it should create a harmonious picture. This includes the color of the body and the individual parts, the colors and materials of the interior trim, the colors and quality of the plastic, carpet, fabric, wood, aluminum, leather, the shape of the stitch, and combinations of all of the above. A separate team works on the color and shape of the devices, buttons, multimedia system screen along with its icons and icons.
The development of a new medium-sized sedan usually employs a team whose number ranges from 25 to 40 people. From the start and until the final approval of the exterior of all the details of the new car takes an average of about two years. Then a small team continues to make minor changes to the car, which is being prepared for serial production.
At each stage, designers of different specialties draw their inspiration in architecture, industrial design, home and office interior, fashionable clothes, explore modern trends and classics, track the appearance of new materials and try to incorporate them into their current project.
If in earlier times a person needed only to attach a couple of seats and a step to sit in the frame, now creating a comfortable and safe body for the car, which will also please the eye of the regular customer of the brand and attract new customers, is a huge amount of working time of highly qualified specialists .