It’s Monday so let’s start the week off with a little inspiration.  This weeks dose of Sketch P*orn shows a quick marker sketch, a little drama, slick side view and a shiny car.  Take a look and see if any of these will help you out this week.  Enjoy!

Non descript and yet very interesting.  Great teaser shot.

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When we create products, we often do it to solve a specific issue or to simplify a task.  But when we design, do we keep the end user’s emotional response as a goal?

The following article (although based on web design, it extends to all forms of Product and Automotive Design) is a great look at what being “in the zone” means:  not only for us when we are designing, but for the user when they are experiencing our creation.  This feeling of being in the zone baits the user to experience more, learn from their experience, and try once again.  The cyclical “baiting” of the user allows them to enjoy (and ultimately recommend) a product more often.  Sometimes, over-simplifying a task dumbs-down the experience for the user to the point where using a product becomes a chore rather than an extension of their continued involvement.

Do you design for emotion and flow?  Or do you design to solve a problem, to get from point “A” to point “B” in the fastest, easiest way?

Article: Designing for Emotion and Flow

In this state of consciousness, people often experience intense concentration and feelings of enjoyment, coupled with peak performance. Hours pass by in what seems like minutes. We tend to enter these states in environments with few interruptions, where our attention becomes focused by a challenge that we’re confident we can handle with our existing skills. Feedback is instantaneous, so we can always judge how close we are to accomplishing our task and reaching our goal. The importance of the task influences our level of motivation and perceptions of how difficult the task will be…

For the complete article, visit Boxes and Arrows.

James Dyson, everyone’s favorite Rebel Millionaire designer (unless you consider Richard Branson an innovator as well, which labels himself as “Everyone’s Favorite Rebel Billionaire”) has plans for a too cool school of innovation in Bath.

Well he DID have plans, anwyays.  That is until the local gov decided that the land was prone to flooding and is doing what they can to prevent Dyson from building a great design school.  Truth be told, the flooding is probably just a cover for the fact that the location requires the demolishing of some “ye olde building” and the local folks are flipping out over it claiming that the new building will be an environmental mess.

Our hopes are still high that something can be worked out.  Otherwise, you’d have seen the last of that snazzy pun I used in the header image, and DEAR GOD no one wants that!

It’s 2008, which means it’s been 4 years since the last Summer Olympics and, with the Olympic Fever running rampant around these parts (we’re Phelps Phans here at CDf) we thought we would take a break from cars and look at product design. Specifically, that of the Olympic Torch.

This year’s torch was designed by Lenovo, creators of laptops. Yes, laptops. Note: I didn’t see the correlation either, but when I saw the final product I was surely delighted. Chosen from some 300 submissions, Lenovo’s design focused on the heritage and history of China and mixed it with modern technology which, if you saw the INCREDIBLE opening ceremonies, you realize is the mantra for the now Chinese Century that we all live in. The name of this year’s torch is “The Cloud of Promise”, designed to resemble a red & white Chinese scroll motifed with clouds. High-tech and extremely sexy, the torch is one to remember, putting an exclamation point on this year’s games.

Regardless, you’ll still here us chanting in the background, “U-S-A! U-S-A!”

Check out the special section that the New York Times devoted to the history of the torch’s appearance (trust us… it’s pretty freakin’ cool to see the different designs and their designers): Click here to go to the NYT article

To see more images of the uber-cool torch, click the “Read More” link…. NOW!
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Frank Stephenson, former Design Chief at Centro Stile Alfa Romeo (that’s fancy talk for “Alfa Romeo’s design studio”), has been gobbled up by McLaren and will head up the design efforts there.  American-born Stephenson becomes the latest Design head to fall victim to the recent Design Shuffle, as OEMs look to shore up their studios with talent and leadership for the upcoming electric car-pocalypse.

The dashing, Bond-villain-esque Stephenson is best known for having a hand in all your favorite small cars, including the MINI, Fiat 500, and MiTo.

So, who’s next?  Chris Bangle?

Get the Design Shuffle pool started.

Andrea Pininfarina, famed designer of some of the greatest Ferraris the world has ever known, a leader amongst Italian Design, and an heir to several generations of car designers, died in an accident early Thursday.  We at CDF share our deepest sympathies and prayers along with the rest of the Design and Automotive world.

Pininfarina was responsible for some of the most iconic designs in Automotive history.  Follow the link below to take a look at Jalopnik’s list of some of their favorites.

Andrea Pininfarina, you will be deeply missed.

Click here for Jalopnik article

Due to the summer being a typically lackluster time of year for new vehicle releases (unless you’re Chevrolet) design studios tend to branch out and, err, TRY a few things.  It is this time of year that we see all manner of products come from these studios, usually as a Design House in collaboration with some other product entity.

We’ve seen LaCie’s Porsche-designed hard drives, watches from Ducati, bobsleds from Lotus, and even foosball tables from Audi.  While this has been a regular part of the design world for decades, we are seeing the current crop become all the more “in our faces” as the automotive market remains in a lull and the studios look to work outside of the auto industry.

Which brings about a great question:  When is it too much?  Or, is it EVER too much?  Should auto industry studios be MORE involved in the rest of the design world, spreading their talents into areas where Design is sorely missed?

Let us know in the comments, and click the link for more images.

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It’s not often we dive into the world of the ridiculously rich and famous, as our Design instincts regularly tell us that great design doesn’t typically float in their oceans of gaudiness.  However, to further along my inability to tell a story with very, very bad boating-related puns have a look at the latest creation from Philippe Starck: the Motor Yacht A, designed for Russian uber-billionaire Andrey Melnichenko and his uber-hot wife Aleksandra.

Melnichenko, the bad boy of Russian wealth (aren’t they all?) commissioned Starck to create this epic yacht design, throwing away the typical rules of boats of the redonkulously rich in favor of a vessel that can scare the bejeezus out of paddle-boats in its way.  Opting for a sleak, streamlined design, with a more enclosed body (read: none of the crazy amounts of open decks), we can only imagine that Starck’s vision was for a menace on the ocean, able to conjure up images of Battlecruisers and war boats of the 40s.

Leave it up to us Designers to throw a monkey wrench into yet another industry, and leave it up to Russian billionaires to use that wrench in excess.

More photos after the break. Images courtesy YachtSpotter.com and SuperYachtTimes.com.

(Thanks, Sean!)

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“And here we…..GO!” With the Dark Knight movie exploding into theaters July 18, there is plenty buzz about how incredible this movie really is! The latest for the Caped Crusader throws him under the deranged claws of the maniacal, homicidal, psychopathic killer known as the JOKER!

I remember watching the campy 60’s movie starring Adam West and Burt Ward in “Batman” with my older brother for the first time. I was probably around 7 or 8. We would “surf” through the channels, all 13 of them, ripping through that sundial shaped channel knob on our state of the art Zenith TV. Suddenly!!! An out of shape middle aged man in tights and blue satin, dawning the prominent symbol of the bat, along with his panty hose wearing boy wonder side kick, Robin, were climbing the side of a fake Styrofoam brick building. My brother and I looked at each other in complete shock and awe, not because Batman had forgotten to take few laps around the track, but because we could not believe we were watching an actual Batman movie!! We had read the comic books, purchased the action figures, but never saw him in real life!! That was the coolest thing!
Ahhhh….those were the days. How things have evolved and progressed….or in some cases…digressed if looking at director Joel Schumacher’s movies. Recently resurrected from the grave in 2005 with the successful Batman Begins, the Batman Franchise has undergone numerous transformations through the years starting with the campy 60’s series (not to forget the early series in the 40’s as well) starring Adam West and Burt Ward in Batman. Twenty three years later, the world was given a true visual treat with Tim Burton’s perspective on a serious, dark, and gothic rendition of the Batman in 1989.

No matter how campy, serious, or ridiculous the script was; the creators and designers for the vehicles and props were always dedicated to providing the audience with the best they had to offer. Each batmobile had evolved to bring to the audience something new and exciting. Let’s take a look at these films.
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