A full 100% Copic day!
11:30 a.m – 1:30 p.m: Theory (techniques of sketching and color with Copic Marker and Sketch)
Practice 2:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. (all participants will exercise with the tutors)

info copic@copic.it

More details after the jump….

CDf is looking for a variety of automotive artwork.  All mediums are acceptable as well as subject matter.  As long as it pertains to transportation.  The more fun and creative the better.  As always profits from the sales will purchase Hot Wheels for the Detroit Children’s Hospital.  So have some fun, help the kids and get your work published.

Details of what to submit,

• All images need to be in 11″x17″ format.  We will do our best to size up (or down) to scale within the template we’ll be using.
• File formats accepted include: JPG, TIFF, and PSD
• All work must be your own.  We will not be held responsible for verifying copyrights or ownership should you submit work that is not yours.
• If you are submitting actual studio work, please confirm with the proper leadership (in writing) and forward to us along with the images.
• Sketches are preferred, whether done digitally or not.  Just get it to us in digital format.
• Contact us for any info.  We’re willing to work with designers of any level to showcase their work for a great cause.
• Submit as many images as you’d like.
• Images due November 13th.
• Email the images to CarDesignFetish@gmail.com

Eve of Eyes Designers’ Night is a celebration of fashion, music and automotive design. The event will host retired and upcoming designers from the automotive industry.
Included will be food, “designer” drinks and live entertainment by DJs Captn20 and AD Cruze. The event is sponsored by LEAR, NISSAN and MICHELIN.

This year, the Eve takes place at CCS’ new Taubman Center for Design Education in Detroit (located at 460 West Baltimore in Detroit’s New Center District).

The best part?  The suggested attire: “DesignerCreative”

Break out the turtlenecks and sport coats!

Starts 6PM EST

The Scuola Politecnica di Design has announced its second annual Summer workshop series with Chris Bangle. Last year’s successful program helped develop Designers of all levels, from students to professionals.

This year’s theme, “An Endeavor in Discontinuity: Exterior Car Design of the Future”,will allow Designers to interact for seven days with one of the most well-respected automotive Designers of modern times, as well as visiting exhibitions and show-rooms throughout Milan, Italy.

Taking place from July 9th – 15th, the workshop registration is filling up quickly.  All those interested in taking part should send their CV and portfolio by e-mail to:info@scuoladesign.com

Participation to the workshop is open to candidates who have a degree from schools / universities
of design, professionals with significant experience and skills in car design and companies.

For more information, visit the official site here.

More images from last Summer’s workshop below.

It’s great to see automotive design conferences popping up around the world.  Being based in Detroit, we only have access to the annual AutoWeek NAIAS Design Forum and the Ward’s Automotive Interiors Conference.  There are similar conferences in California, the UK, and Italy, but the need for more is apparent: as automobile technology is affecting design, it is increasingly important for Designers to share their knowledge of successful design and innovation.

The Auto(r) design conference, just in its second year, brings this focus to Eastern Europe.  Held recently at Zagreb’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Auto(r) brought two days of lectures and workshops to the attendees and featured several prominent Designers and Design Thinkers: Maarten de Bruijn (founder of Spyker), Sebastien Stassin (designer of the KTM X-Bow), and Giancarlo Perini (Car Styling) were just a few of the individuals who provided insight.

The winner of the Auto(r) 2010 Design Challenge was Croatia’s Zdenko Vukoja.

For the full press release and more photos, read on below or visit www.automotivedesignconference.com.

(Thanks to Daniel for sending this along!)

Auto(r) 2010. automotive design conference

20-21March, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb

Auto(r) is new automotive design conference that started last year. It was the biggest automotive design
conference in Europe in 2009 and again this year. For the second time it took place Zagreb, Croatia,
this time in Museum of Contemporary Art. Two days of lectures, panel discussions and workshops
attracted car and design enthusiasts from the region as a public. Auto(r) 2010 speaker list included
Maarten de Bruijn (Silvestris), founder of Spyker, inventor of their unique styling and designer of all
Spyker models until 2005; Sebastien Stassin (Kiska) motorcycle designer that created KTM X-Bow.
Auto(r) also hosted two world renowned automotive design theoreticians: Giancarlo Perini (Car Styling)
gave design overview of Geneva motor show 2010 and Enrico Fagone (Scuola Politecnica di Design)
has spoken on past, present and future of automotive design. Francesco Carbini (Scuola Politecnica di
Design) exposed clay modelling profession; Kemal Curić (Ford) made presentation on Ford Iosis Max
and Nemanja Lalicic (ex Honda) on his work that includes Stola Phalcon. Marko Lukovic (University of
Arts Belgrade) has spoken on his experience of winning Peugeot Design Contest and Dragan Zegarac
(Volkswagen) on LED technology and “night design”. Workshop was guided by Dario Dropucic
(freelance designer) and panel discussion by Boris Ljubicic, the most famous Croatian designer. Auto(r)
2010 Design Challenge winner was announced after jury consisted out of speakers has unanimously
chosen work of Zdenko Vukoja, amateur designer from Croatia.
KTM X-Bow dragged big attention as it was exposed in front of the venue and occasionally driven by
speakers.
Auto(r) is supported by Scuola Politecnica di Design, City of Zagreb, Renault, Volvo, Ford, Auto Design
& Styling magazine.
SPEAKERS
1. MAARTEN DE BRUIJN (Spyker, Silvestris) – Dutch designer end entrepreneur, co-founder of new
Spyker and designer of all models until 2005 when he left to start Silvestris and produce boats.
2. FRANCESCO CARBINI (DaimlerChrysler, Moto Guzzi, Audi, Ford, BMW, MINI, Italdesign Giugiaro,
Yamaha) Clay modeller and lecturer at Scuola Politecnica di Design, Milano.
3. DARIO DROPUCIC (freelance) – Croatian with Scuola Politecnica di Design Transportation design
degree.
4. ENRICO FAGONE (Car & Transportation design, founder and editor in chief) – One of world’s most
influential theoreticians on automotive design.
5. NEMANJA LALICIC (Stola, Honda, freelance) – Serbian designer in 2008 transformed Maybach
Exelero concept into Stola Phalcon Coupe for Arab oil sheiks.
6. MARKO LUKOVIC (winner of Peugeot Design Contest 2001., Zastava, freelance) – Winner of the
most famous automotive design contest in the world, organised by Peugeot and Assistant Professor
at two universities in Serbia.
7. GIANCARLO PERINI (Car Styling, founder and Editor for Europe) – One of the world most
prominent journalists specialised in automotive design. 1969-74 he was marketing and PR director
at Italdesign.
8. SEBASTIEN STASSIN (Piaggio, Honda Motorcycles, KTM, Kiska) – Motorbike designer credited for
style of extreme car KTM X-Bow.
9. DRAGAN ŽEGARAC (Volvo, Volkswagen) – Design Project Manager in Volkswagen design
department.

The second in the Royal College of Art’s Future Vehicle panel series, titled The role of the vehicle designer – where is it headed?, presented an opportunity to answer a question as perplexing to those already working in the industry as those wanting to gain entrée. As has been previously established in this series, the industry is in a state of flux and as old business models and market requirements change, so must the designer. But how?

Head of vehicle design at the RCA, Dale Harrow, suggested automotive designers need to get a better grip on how to operate outside of the secret garden of the design studio, integrating skills in “strategy, conceptual understanding and communication” to develop more satisfying products. By way of example, he discussed BMW’s 2007 collaboration with the University of  East London and the Social Issues Research Centre, The Secret Life of Cars, that saw designers working with ethnographers to better understand the consumer’s relationship with their car.

The Tata Nano. Not a "car with nothing, but a motorcycle with everything" according to Pratap Bose

Pratap Bose, of Tata Motors and RCA alumni, emphasised the need for designers to be willing to travel widely and work within different cultural frameworks, noting that the development programme for his latest vehicle saw designers travelling from the UK to France and on to Korea and India.

Bose also echoed Harrow in his call for designers to think strategically about the products they envision, noting that Tata’s succes to date has resulted from identifying and designing for market segments that more established car makers have either failed to see or ignored.

RCA PhD candidate Louise Kiesling drew links between her previous experience in the fashion industry to illustrate how technology has had both positive and negative impacts on designers.

Trendstop.com, and example of the web helping automotive designers with research

She hailed social media as a boon for designers, not only for facilitating the trend research that feeds their work but for also gauging public reaction to their output, establishing new modes of market research.

Kiesling warned, however, that developing and experiencing design through virtual channels still has it’s challenges, especially when assessing form or using trim materials appropriately.

In discussing research she has conducted with Tier 1 and 2 suppliers in Europe, she said suppliers had told her that “vehicle designers don’t understand materials anymore [or have] the craftsmanship knowledge”. A response to the drag-and-drop nature of material application in CAD programmes, Kiesling stressed that automotive designers need to develop meaningful relationships with suppliers and their materials.

Finally, Kenny Schachter,  art dealer and commissioner of the Zaha Hadid-designed Z-Car, envisioned a future where the lines between automotive design and art become increasingly (and deliberately) blurred.

David Hockney's BMW 850i Art Car. Schachter wonders why manufacturers haven't capitalised on the art car phenomenon.

It was an idea that, initially, appeared tangential at best. But as Schachter went on, it became clear that in a world that becomes increasingly hostile to the car as an everyday tool, perhaps redemption could be found in concertedly elevating the car to the plane of collectable art object, paving the way for a more progressive industry less reliant on volume and “lowest common denominator” design.

From a collection of talks that provided no direct answers to the question posed by the chairman, there was, none-the-less, an overall theme in evidence. It was clear, in the minds of the panelists, that car designers will no longer be able to shelter within the hallowed halls of their design studios. New political, social and cultural contexts are demanding a new approach to vehicle design, an approach that is more connected, more social and more empathetic to the changing needs of the world at large and designers will have little choice but to embrace the change.

This post first appeared on DownsideUpDesign on May 10, 2010.

The Royal College of Art is hosting further “Vehicle Design Sessions” over the forthcoming weeks – investigating “Mobility needs, mobility wants” on 11^th May, “Future forms” on 27^th May, and “Women in Vehicle Design” on 1^stJune.

Drew Smith (@drewpasmith) is a design strategist and journalist based in London, England. He is an associate of a number of design strategy consultancies and has also lectured at Coventry University and The University of Technology, Sydney. He has written for PSFK, Car Design News, Design Droplets and also publishes his own blog, DownsideUpDesign

Scott Robertson leads a fantastic life.  Spaceships, aliens, race cars, and video games make up his not-so-average day.  It’s the kind of day that many — or day we say, all? — Designers would want to have just once a month.  With the freedom to draw just about anything he wants, Scott Robertson is an Industrial Designer living the dream.

So, you can imagine our excitement when we found out that he would be hosting a live lecture as a part of CCS’ monthly lecture series in Detroit.  We grabbed every recording gadget that we could find, headed to the art & design school, and prepared ourselves to be blown away.

Scott began the lecture with a little of his background.  His career started out much like a typical Designer’s: attend art school, get an internship (in his case, designing bikes for Kestrel), graduate and get a full-time ID job creating medical equipment and consumer products.  It was humbling to see that his beginnings were as mundane as ours appear to be, which lend to his incredible modesty.

He eventually taught at his alma mater of Art Center College of Design, developing futuristic vehicles as a method to teach his students and use as demo pieces. Realizing how disenchanted he was with creating plastic landfill, he transitioned from product design into the entertainment industry.  His natural entrepreneurial spirit tempted him to create a product that he felt could be timeless, one that wouldn’t have engineering limits or become trash, and certainly one that would allow for more freedom of his personal expression.  Design Studio Press was born, and out of it came his first book: Start Your Engines.

Scott Robertson’s design process isn’t typical.  Rather, instead of creation out of process, he creates out of emotion.  While he may have a vision of a concept to move towards, Robertson often relies on his tools to help him remain creative.  His work in creating creatures for his Alien Race series was based on a happy accident.

“We had a dinner party one night, and I had Photobooth open on my Mac.  With the mirror filter on, everyone took turns making crazy faces.  Humans are hard-wired to see faces in everything around us, so eventually we began turning ourselves into aliens.”

The resulting photos were brought into Photoshop and illustrated into highly-detailed and unique characters.

“That one was an onion.  In that one, my wife was holding an iPod over her eye.” Using several found objects — dead fish, plant roots — he has created over 5000 creatures.  This process netted him an unlimited library of photographs to begin from.  In a live demo on the stage, Robertson crumpled up a piece of paper and turned it into a ferocious, horned beast.

Its this type of thinking that makes Robertson unique.  I was taught to research the heck out of something before beginning a sketch.  Robertson just… sketches, often creating the story and history around the image.  A self-professed analog artist, Robertson works a lot in pen, marker, gauche, but loves Photoshop as well.  He’s recently begun utilizing 3D modeling software suite Modo, but may move on to some other tool soon after.  “I challenge myself to reinvent over and over again,” he says.

Robertson loves the process of inventing and learning.  The moment of discovery is important, but so is refining that moment and sharing it with other people.  Robertson compiles source books of inspirational images.  He’ll modify the heck out of a photo if he likes one small portion of it, and experiments in zoom blur and HDR photography for one-point perspective background images.

Fear of failure, he says, is the hardest step.  “Having the perseverance to let yourself fail allows progress. Having the wrong expectations about work can lead to fear. Leave yourself the proper time to fail and progress.”  Tools like Photobooth and sketching with his left hand instead of his right lead to no expectations.  Experimentation allows for reduced fear.

Through all that, though, Robertson relies on the basics of Design to create his work.

“Every designer needs traditional sculpting & modeling ability to inform their drawing ability, making transition to digital sculpting natural.  Designers need to learn and do as much as possible to be competitive.  It’s not how you draw, it’s what you draw.”

His comments read like a how-to guide for beginners, but the value lasts long into the professional world.

Robertson’s current passion is the development of Alien Race as an IP that he can spread across what he calls the “four quadrants” of the entertainment industry: movies, video games, comics, and toys.  Alien Race is just that: racing on the backs of bioengineered creatures from alien worlds.  He is also working on completing a new book about video game inspired vehicles.

Scott admits that he’s always in “rusty” mode, and that he generally never peaks.

That’s one kind of rust that I don’t think I’d ever want removed.

Scott Robertson presented lectures at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit during the week of April 25th, 2010.  His highlight lecture on Thursday, April 29th, was a part of CCS’ Toyota Lecture series.

Scott can be found online at DrawThrough.com and DesignStudioPress.com.  He has worked on video games (Spy Hunter 2) and movies (Minority Report) throughout his career.

We’ll have an interview with Scott coming soon… stay tuned!

Video courtesy fellow CDF’er Arvind at Driven Mavens

Now, more than ever, sustainability is the issue du jour being discussed – endlessly – amongst observers of the automotive industry. After years of car makers talking up their environmental sustainability credentials, they are now facing a crisis of an altogether more fundamental nature: the sustainability of their businesses.

To investigate the issues surrounding sustainability, both environmental and business, the Royal College of Art (RCA) held a seminar titled Seriously Now: where is the sustainable vehicle design?, one of a series of 5 events looking broadly at the future of automotive design.

How far have we come, really?

Up first, RCA PhD candidate Artur Mausbach offered an historical context in which to place the current state of sustainable vehicle design, noting that technological developments had far outpaced the ability of designers to significantly alter the package and appearance of the car.

Likening current eco cars, conceptually at least, to the very first automobiles that were technological marvels but lacking a clear design identity, Mausbach called for a change in how designers communicate sustainability to encourage consumers to form an emotional attachment to a new automotive paradigm.

We then heard from Nico Sergent of open-source automotive start-up River Simple. Although much has been made of the company’s technology demonstrator, launched in London last year, the real interest in Sergent’s presentation lay in his description of RiverSimple’s 7 point design, production and service strategy.

Key to this is discarding the traditional sales model, which is predicated on people becoming bored of their car after a few years (or, indeed, the car going wrong) and thus trading up to a newly manufactured vehicle with its associated environmental deficits.

River Simple has instead focused on the leasing of the car and, more interestingly, the components from suppliers, thereby forcing the design of the vehicle as a whole to be more robust. As the lease model guarantees RiverSimple income for the life of the car, it’s their interests to produce a long-lasting design to underpin the sustainability of the business.

River Simple's Open Source Car

Sergent also touched on the distributed manufacturing envisaged for the vehicle. Freed from the economies of scale demanded by pressed steel monocoques (the car is made of carbon fiber and plastics), co2-intensive supply-chain logistics can be simplified, in turn making localised factories producing only 5000 cars per year financially viable.

In an entertaining look at the aesthetic development of the car, Geoff Hollington, industrial designer and writer, argued convincingly that we have entered a new era of baroque vehicle design at a time when the socio-political context should, logically, result in something vastly different.

Geoff Hollington's "f**k you & f**k the planet" Audi Q7

Hollington eruditely observed that we’ve moved, in design terms, from the era of Venus [de Milo] cars – which he typified as “multi-purpose, caring, multi-tasking things” – through an era of Michelangelo’s David cars to a new age defined by Arnold Schwarzenegger. But it’s not “Arnie the man, it’s Arnie the machine that’s become the paradigm…” illustrated, to much amusement, using an Audi Q7 with red “eyes”.

Relating this back to sustainable vehicle design, Hollington stated that design should encourage people to “drive for enjoyment, …not for sport. …To savour the journey rather than crave the destination, to be generous rather than competitive and to value smartness over brute strength”.

He argues that out of this perceptual shift from aggression to equanimity, the car can evolve a calmer aesthetic and a new format that is slower, lighter, and crucially, more efficient and sustainable. In closing, he said it was our responsibility as designers “to get people to fall in love with a different type of car”.

For Nick Talbot, of Seymour/Powell, one of the keys to sustainable design is shifting from design as a consumption driver to a reducer, a view championed by Alan Chochinov in his influential 1000 Words manifesto.

He talked of research conducted by Seymour/Powell demonstrating that the rate of phone churn by iPhone owners has reduced to around two years (from a period of months for some phone brands), a substantial improvement that he put down to the higher intrinsic value of the device communicated through it’s design and it’s price tag.

He related this back to the auto industry via a 60s Porsche 911 that, owing to the higher initial quality of materials, engineering and design remains a desirable product today. He said the lesson was simple: “Make things that are higher value, that are more robust, that people want to keep for longer [and] derive more value from” and through extending the product lifecycle, you can improve sustainability.

The final speaker was Rob Holdway of Giraffe Innovation, a low carbon design and environmental management consultancy. Perhaps to the despair of some in the audience, Holdway stated that there “is no such thing as a sustainable car… it’s not sustainable, and never will be sustainable” but went on to suggest that a smart car could form a component of a networked, systematised approach to mobility.

The barrier to the inclusion of the car in this mobility network is that automotive designers, in his experience, work in “a very narrow field”, operating within a model of isolated innovation that often only allows for evolutionary development, actively discouraging the cross-disciplinary, collaborative processes required to develop a holistic mobility solution.

One of the provocative quotes Holdway discussed

With Holdway having finished on a note that was, no doubt, somewhat unsettling for the largely student audience (he jokingly referred to it as a therapy session…), it was perhaps inevitable that questions from the floor would focus on employability in an increasingly fractured jobs market.

As panelists encouraged students to choice edit who they want to work for on a sustainability basis, it was noteworthy that all either suggested or agreed with the notion that real change in the automotive industry was not going to come from established industry players, but from start-ups or, indeed, outside the industry all together.

Part PR exercise for the RCA, no doubt keen to be the European ying to Art Centre’s American yang when it comes to sustainable automotive design events, and part mind-expanding exercise for the assembled students, for those working in the industry that made it along there was little new to be found.

The seminar did, however, raise the issue of another kind of sustainability: that of the education offered by schools like the RCA.

In his treatise, Restarting Car Design, RCA alumni Peter Naumann sounds a clarion call for a decisive shift away from automotive design courses “almost exclusively… developing stylistic skills”. Instead, he argues, that educators should prepare students “to be much more closely involved in the entire design process and to be used more broadly… to work in a problem oriented way and to be involved in coming up with solutions in interdisciplinary teams”.

In this light, the value of the RCA opening up dialogue between educators, students and innovative thinkers shouldn’t be underestimated. If educational institutions can continue to capitalise on these sorts of events, we may see some of the fundamental shifts in automotive design education required to prepare students to design for a sustainable, post-consumer mobility context.

This post first appeared on DownsideUpDesign on April 28, 2010.

The Royal College of Art is hosting further “Vehicle Design Sessions” over the forthcoming weeks – looking at “Mobility needs, mobility wants” on 11^th May, “Future forms” on 27^th May, and “Women in Vehicle Design” on 1^st June.

Drew Smith (@drewpasmith) is a design strategist and journalist based in London, England. He is an associate of a number of design strategy consultancies and has also lectured at Coventry University and The University of Technology, Sydney. He has written for PSFK, Car Design News, Design Droplets and also publishes his own blog, DownsideUpDesign

Our friends at Autoline After Hours have a treat for us tonight, hosting a live webcast with GM Designer Bob Boniface (and former instructor of yours truly at CCS).  Bob, who’s career spans companies like Chrysler (the Intrepid) and GM (Volt) will be chatting about design, GM, and the electric revolution.  This is a great opportunity to speak to one of the individuals directly involved with GM’s creative content and the future of their automobiles.

The event starts at 7PM ET / 4PM PT at www.AutolineDetroit.tv, or view via the embedded video below.

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Autoline After Hours #44
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Got questions for Rapid Fire? Put “AAH Question” in the subject line and e-mail it to viewermail@autolinedetroit.tv or … Call us at 1-620-288-6546 (1-620-AUTOLIN) or by clicking below!

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