Car Design Fetish

There is something nice about drawing on a white board.  No high quality expectations of line quality and always has a nice looseness to it.  What better table then to have at home to sit around and talk design.  Imagine the ideas that will appear and disappear over a few cocktails. Sweet as a Nut is a UK-based company that applies artwork to coffee and side table tops, from roses to tapes to whiteboards. You can choose from one of their designs or you can contact them to create your own.  This is a great high end look to an otherwise low end product.

[thanks to Design Milk for the find]

Visualization techniques are constantly evolving.  It started with stone in cave, then pen to paper, then computer modeling and now we are finally getting into the hologram arena.  Holograms have always teased us in movies such as the landscape being spun around in the movie Avatar.  We are so close to having that capability.  This video shows a new form of holographic visualization used for architecture.  Imagine the possibilities of it in the automotive and product world.

Picture going into a sales meeting and showing the customer this.  Get a full size hologram of a car and show multiple versions in a clinic without ever having to make a prototype (maybe then the price of cars would come down).  This kind of visualization could greatly speed up the development process.

Holographic Architectural Imaging by Zebra from Core77 on Vimeo.

Here is some more info on the product from Freshome.

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Like everyone who watched the unveiling of Apple’s new IPad yesterday, we have to throw in our two cents.  Were we disappointed?  Kind of, but give some credit, it had a lot to live up to.  I don’t want to repeat all of the issues that everyone else is talking about so I will focus on a Pro and a Con that relate to the auto/ design industry.  Lets start with the negative.

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This Interactive Recreational Entertainment Vessel (iREV) is a pontoon with a specific purpose.  10 people can sit around the central low smoke charcoal grill or a number of other modules that can replace it.  This is quite the floating bar but at 24g’s you can buy one hell of a pontoon boat.  Still it is a pretty cool product for floating around with friends.  It is also environmentally friendly with 45% reclaimed material,  80% recyclable and it is made in America.

The way we interact is definitely changing.  Cell phones do everything but make calls anymore and cars have turned into being a  getting to work necessity instead of the Sunday joy ride.

The IPhone has certainly changed the mobile phone market.  It is more about how “I” chose the Apps and customized this into a media device.  Oh and by the way it also makes phone calls.

Could the same be true in automotive marketing?  Is the car no longer about being automotive transportation but more of a device?  The new, well new in the U.S. Nissan Cube is debuting as a “Mobile Device.”

I think this is the beginning of an auto manufacturing finally finding a way to communicate to the younger generation.  The new generation of buyers is not all about horsepower and bling.  They do not want to think about spending money on gas and would rather spend it on tech/ media devices.  They want a place to hang out with their friends and share music, away from the parents.

Stay tuned and lets see if this isometric rounded box can entertain the newbies and take their parents money.  …..But all my friends have “Mobile Devices.”  Can you hear it now?

We hope you all had a good long weekend.  We sure did.  As you unpack and realize you can’t find your phone charger, toothbrush, beer bong, etc., then you may want to check this out.  Perfect for all your media accessories the Grid-It system is a clever and simple way to customize your storage needs.  Cocoon has developed an elastic grid system that will hold whatever you want in place.  They have also developed a pretty sweet line of lap top cases, messenger bags and the such to put the Grid-It product into.  This is a pretty cool product for not too shabby prices.  Check it out here.

I am sure you have all seen the Microsoft Surface.  An amazing product and can’t wait for it to be mainstream.  So what is after the coffee table Surface?

Oh Hello is a digital media company that developed this video for Microsoft.  I cannot speak to the validity of the video or why it was made, but it is easy to believe this happening in another 10 years.  Check it out for an insane dose of hope / inspiration for the future.

Microsoft Sustainability from Kray Cédric on Vimeo

Are you looking for that spring project or some new furniture to spruce up that overused winter living room?  Turn that project car sitting in the garage into something useful.  Joel Hester has turned some junkyard forever sheet metal into some sweet industrial style tables.

Joel has made a whole collection including bed frames, desks and armoires.  It is great to see materials get reused in a new way and still show the natural surface.

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Here we go again.  Another BMW that objects to being put into any class of vehicles.  Is it a sedan, crossover, station wagon, maybe a really long hatchback?  Maybe just a squashed X6.  Pretty soon BMW will be able to offer vehicles in 2 inch increments rather than the amount of doors or ground clearance.

Anyway, here it is, Chris Bangles last touch on BMW.  This lifestyle vehicle know as a PAS (Progressive Activity Sedan) is Bimmers newest attempt at creating a niche vehicle proportion.  The X6 was their first attempt at this and is a pretty impressive vehicle if you actually get a chance to see one on the road (not too many here is the D).  It is great to see energy put into tweaking the norm as we know it and try to create a proportion that although may look awkward at first could become the new standard.  Think of Mercedes CLS “4 door coupe, horrible headroom, ingress, egress for rear passengers, but it is the newest and greatest thing.  Every OEM is coming out with one.

Is this a success?  Read the rest of this entry »

Local Motors is going on a Mid-West tour.    They will be visiting Lawrence Tech and College for Creative Studies in Detroit February 10th.  After that will be stops at The Cleveland Institute of Art on the 11th and Art Institute of Cincinnati on the 12th.  This will be a great chance to see what they have to offer the automotive world and for you to ask all those questions of how they are going to do it.

—Lawrence Tech from 11-1

—College for Creative Studies from 2-4

CDf will most likely be at CCS and then hanging out after with the LM crew.  Be sure to check it out and put some faces to all those screen names you see on the Local Motors website.