What People wantDesign is dominated by two main approaches; one, is looking at the project from the perspective of the manufacturer. This is the way some designers think. These are designers who work inside companies, and consultancies that work closely with manufacturers or have their own brand. In this perspective the designer usually spends a lot of time studying the ‘market’ and is expected to know the ‘manufacturing constraints’. Working in a styling studio of a big automobile manufacturer gives designers the feeling of being part of a team and they share the language and terminologies used in that company. This perspective is good for you to get and is a way that is learned best in the first few years after joining a company as a trainee. The company takes responsibility in bringing trainees up to speed on the way of the company. Now there is a problem with the company perspective, and this is especially true these days when the automobile companies have been admitting freely that they ‘got it wrong’.

Two, is when the designer aligns himself with the consumer, or people. This is what I train my students for. I hold that the human is at the center of a design project. So the task of the designer is to go into society and find out everything about the way people go about their lives. You can see this same perspective echoed by Chris Bangle in the video where he sent off a team to go and study people. This is also the theme of the film ‘What women want’, do see it.

So the idea or the form comes later, and the study comes first.

An ability to work with formThe ability to draw, do CAD and render are key physical skills in being able to undertake a vehicle design project. The skill of the mind is the ability to work with form. The role of a designer in a large company is very specific. A big multinational firm is made up of a very highly educated and experienced team of professionals. The designer in this community is the artist and is required to be the person who defines the form of the skin of the car. His involvement is also only required to be skin deep!

People trained in product design find this, their role as form givers, very difficult to accept. In India and Japan (see at the end of this text for suggestions to start reading on aesthetics) culture and poetry easily move in design. The dominant culture in Australia is very different in that there is a cultural cringe with the non technical in design. This is understandable in a context where there is no mass manufacturing, for in the context of small firms designers have to be engineers too. However this view, of design as a kind

of engineering, is totally incompatible with the culture of vehicle design in the context of large companies. In fact the focus upon engineering issues leaves very little space and time for a focus upon form and ways of developing and appreciating form. This is a good time to ask yourself how many form development methods and strategies you have, and if you find you cannot even cite one method then it is time for you to do something about it.

I taught form for years, and a course in Advanced form too, to build capability in my students in what I consider the core of design practice. In addition to strategies for form development, I taught them aesthetics and an appreciation of the arts for I believe the sustaining inspiration to design beautiful things comes from sharing in the project of making beautiful. The project is made up of people writing music, doing drama, and basically engaged in transforming the quality of peoples engagement with visual, audio and tactile phenomena.

It is quite possible the three years in design school have taught you much, but there is a danger too in the culture where you freely choose the projects and courses you want to do. The danger is both in begin conservative in choice, where you end up doing more of the stuff you already are capable in, and in being adventurous, where you do things that you cannot integrate back into your practice at all. You may easily end up in year 4 of the program with absolutely no exposure to writings on design but with a deep knowledge of sustainability and a passion for changing the world. Such passions are good but it is important that you work out a way to integrate this knowledge into your design practice. The challenge for you is to foreground design and push to the background the things that will make your design have that extra depth.

You may find that when you foreground design it makes you uncomfortable as the value system you constructed over the past three years is being questioned. This questioning is important and is a point of new learning and realignments of old knowledge. You may be faced with the question - so what is design then? For your answer I would recommend that you go to the masters, the great and good designers of the past, and to all wise people. In some respects people and their deep emotions haven’t changed at all. You, as an agency engaged in a profession that is about visual culture on this planet, need to come home. To that place where things are first beautiful. So do read and be open.

Follow up: See Wikipedia for ‘Aesthetic’s and ‘Japanese Aesthetics’.

On the method in car Design but also all things designI taught design in India before moving to Australia. From 1994 to 2003 the majority of my students, especially those doing their final project with me, joined vehicle manufacturers. At that time in India, as also now, the vehicle manufacturing sector paid the highest salaries often about double what the product manufacturing companies paid. From following the careers of my students over the years both in India and as they moved overseas working for the auto majors I have a good understanding of the demands that were placed upon them and more importantly for me I could understand what it was that made some of them stay as skill in the workplace and others move up to engage with senior management.

It was easy to get jobs in auto companies in those days - and probably still is. There were many jobs and when the companies came for campus interviews they vied with each other to come early, to pick up the top students in the batch, and competed with each other to offer the best salary packages. I was for some time looking after placements and was responsible for the placement interviews calendar. I still remember the time Honda motorcycle came in on a Saturday because Suzuki, the cars division, was coming in on Monday.

Honda came to the interviews with sheets of drawing paper - and Kamata-san was keen to pick up the ones who could draw the best. The rest, how to design motorcycles, was not important. For as the sensei he would teach them in his own way - for he

saw them working with him for ten years at least. He would start them as he always did with young design employees, with the design of decals and over the years they would move up to more important things like accessories and then finally many years later work as his assistant on the design of a new model. Vehicle styling was for him a craft, just like traditional Japanese lacquer work or calligraphy, and only the most highly skilled were admitted into the styling studios. So like the crafts the work in styling was all about the eye and the heart (kimochi).

All manner of people aspire to work in the design studios of auto companies. Among the students who left these jobs soon after joining were some of my best students. They gave up big salaries and it was a big decision to leave so they often talked to me before making this decision. This dialogue with former students is common in India for I was their sensei after all and in a traditional society that is very important for their identity as they claim to be so and so’s student through their lives. I learnt that the job in styling can be quite un-challenging for one looking to design with their head and not their eyes. Styling is a silent undertaking and has no room for intellectual discussion and dialogue.

If I were to essentialize just two capabilities to highlight in the area of vehicle design I would choose to go with; (a) An understanding of what people want and an ability to go and find what people want, &(b) An ability to work with form