We often discuss the changes needed for automotive companies to be successful and “up-to-date” in an increasingly demanding technological world.  One of the ways design studios are starting to embrace technology is based on the tried-and-true method of critiquing the work of other Designers.  Group critiques, or “crits” as we affectionately call them, are a part of the design world that no other field or industry engages in.  It opens the floor to opinion from other designers, often leading to vastly improved products visually, increased effectiveness and appropriateness of a design, and market-leading products.  In fact without crits a design can end up short-sighted and a designer not pushed further towards a proper direction.

With the usage of new tools and design methods, critiques must adapt to better serve the designers AND the product.  Modern methods of bettering design critiques include Smart Board (interactive white board) usage with notation and sketch overlays, increased usage of technologies such as WebX and GoToMeeting, and even video conferencing.

Local Motors has a unique situation: Being an online community of designers, students, engineers, and car aficionados they must allow for a variety of feedback from potential customers & designers in order to make their product successful, as well as provide feedback to hopeful designers in improving their concepts and design skills.

The method they decided to employ is unique, but steeped in what the community already knows.

Read on to find out how.

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This week’s Web of the Week is NetCarShow.com, a website devoted to automotive images, wallpapers, and high-res galleries.

From their own words:

NetCarShow.com offers thousands of high quality car pictures and car wallpapers. All makes. All models.
Classic cars, muscle cars, exotic cars, supercars, everyday cars…

Much like SeriousWheels.com, NetCarShow offers thousands of images, broken down by make, year, and more.  Apart from professional benchmarking sites (such as A2Mac1) this is the best you’ll probably get in terms of high-quality auto images.

This week’s WOW is CGPad, a web community revolved around sketching, tutorials, and artists.  The site is small, but has videos, articles, and several tutorials based around different pieces of software, and frm different artists.  Although you must join their site to view the tutorials, it encourages an ever-growing community of artists and designers.

Dig in & click away.

www.cgpad.org

This week’s WOW is Design Milk.  The site is based around great product design, with a focus on materials, colors, and manufacturing methods lending to the product’s design.  There are some great concepts on this site, especially for students looking to see what is out there (or what COULD be out there) from a materials and processes standpoint.

Design-Milk.com

This week’s WOW (we like that better than WOTW) is newcomer IDSketching.com.  Currently in BETA, the site focuses around the sharing of sketching techniques for Industrial Designers…  hence the name “IDSketching”.  As of the time we publish this, there are 12 videos on the site, ranging from automotive sketching, to 1-hour competitions, to product sketches.

The site’s creators are John Muhlenkamp and Spencer Nugent, who met in college.

Check out the site, and enjoy the vids and other content.

Hot sketches?  Check.  Giant wheels?  Check.  Aggressive styling?  Check.  Production vehicle?  Check..?  Yes, CHECK.

Local Motors has released information on their first build, the “Rally Fighter” by recent winner Sangho Kim.  The concept was born of true open-source thinking via LM’s Design Process community section of their website: Designer creates concept, community critiques concept, designer refines concept, community critiques again, and so on.  To designers, the process is reminiscient of every college design course (and every succesful design studio) we had, with weekly critiques of our designs in efforts to make it better.  (We’ll have more on the Design process in a future article).  Kim’s concept was one of the first to utilize the Design Process, and did so effectively, evolving over the summer into the vehicle that you see in the images below.

The vehicle, although it will have to slightly morph to fit today’s safety and manufacturing standards, is a take on the stylish not-so-off-road genre that BMW, Audi, and even Hyundai are starting to take a look into seriously.  Dubbed a “larger lighter-weight” car that is fuel-efficient, the Rally Fighter had it’s roots as a BMW-inspired concept, picking up the look of the X6 and eventually evolving the proportion and form language to become more unique.  While not as outlandhish as many concepts we see come out of other design competitions (and other start-ups) the Rally Fighter has a clean, modern aesthetic that will aim to help define the Local Motors brand language.

If the final vehicle retains much of the “sketch on wheels” appeal of Kim’s concept, then the Rally Fighter will be a winner.  With the help of LM team members such as Ben Messmer (Lead Designer at Local Motors) and their engineering staff and community, the project looks promising, and will be a nice way for the design communityto showcase itself in the increasingly open-source world that we live in.  Congratulations to Sangho Kim, who’s having one heck of a summer!

Official press release (and a few more images) after the break.
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With this weeks WOTW we take a look at Instructables, the website about making stuff and doing things. Instructables describes itself as “The World’s Biggest Show & Tell” and justifiably so. Relying on user-submitted How-To articles, the site always has fresh content.
From starting engines, to constructing toys, to creating insane little time-wasting objects, Instructables is a terrific resource for some right-brain creative thinking.

The social aspect of the website is great, as members create groups of like-minded inventors, contests are always under way, and newsletters and events are prominently featured.

The site is great for every little gem of creativity that it offers, and every bit as handy on those rainy days when you have finished sketching robots and need something to occupy your time.

Check them out at Instructables.com

Car companies + internet. Seems like it would be a natural marketing and sales tool, right?  Well, up until recently, OEMs were terrified of the intrawebz as buying a car online from a corporation is still nearly impossible to do.  In fact, finding the correct information for a vehicle and its options on a company’s website is still not very easy.

So how do corporations solve the issue of failed informational websites?  Well, they jump headfirst into crazy marketing schemes and go all web-two-point-oh on us!  From games, to wannabe Facebooks, to Legos, auto companies are doing anything they can to get their viral marketing campaigns moving along.

Take a look at a few of our faves, and add yours into our comments.

Example:

Dodge Quest

www.Dodge-Quest.com

A direct rip-off of classic 8-bit video gaming (in this case the Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior NES games) Dodge fabricated an online Flash game worthy of our time.  With the 80s and 8-bit gaming beck in style, Dodge manages to make a successfl attempt at capturing our attention for an entire afternoon. You play the role of a weird, toad-headed character trying to win the heart of his “fair maiden” by buying her a Dodge.  Yep, nothing says romantic like a Dodge.

Complete with a stats system, fights with townspeople, and a full town to walk around in and harass other characters, Dodge Quest puts any Grand Theft Auto game to shame.

More sites after the jump.

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This weeks WOTW (or should we just call it “WOW”?) is Yanko Design. One of the top design sites out there, I’m amazed that we haven’t really posted much about it in the past. Yanko is focused on Designers showcasing their own work. By sending an article, info about your design, or images over to the crew, Yanko posts it or posts about it. The fantastic thing about that is its constant influx of Design-related information: Yanko typically gets information about a product before anyone else.

Think of it as a way for Designers to pimp themselves. Get on Yank = instant notoriety for you or your product.

Great site, great product design focus, and great way to kill an entire Friday afternoon.  Check them out at www.YankoDesign.com

This week’s Web of the Week is NeuBlack.  We were recently turned onto this graphic/product/living design blog by one of our readers and have been hooked ever since.  The blog is updated daily with news about products, off-the-wall gadgets, vehicles, graphics, web deisgn, furniture… basically the uses of Design in the modern world (and how cool and weird they can be).

NeuBlack’s articles range from commenting on a wooden computer, to Grand Theft Auto IV, to the Ronn Scorpion hybrid super car.  They frequently feature work by up-and-coming artists and designers, have a pasison for proper uses of Green Design, and help sponsor design-related contests and events.

A site worthwhile, if anything more than to feel like you are a part of the “in crowd.”

Check it out at NeuBlack.com