Why Modern Car Designs Are So Visually Complex | Q&A w/ Pro Designer

this video is sponsored by squarespace welcome everybody to the first design theory q a session we've got a ton of questions and the first question is why do modern car designs look so busy and complex okay so there are a bunch of reasons and i think that when people say visually complex they're talking about all of these bone lines and creases you see on a lot of modern car designs and i think one of the main reasons is primarily around safety standards aerodynamics requirements and a whole bunch of other limitations that make it really really hard to change the overall proportions of the design if you can't change like the overall outline or silhouette of the car very easily this means that a lot of designers kind of have to resort to these really complicated surface transitions in order to make their design stand out from the competition and one of the biggest reasons for complicated cars is because the safety standards require the car to be a lot puffier and taller so that's because of crumple zone requirements and if we just look at the height of the windows of this bmw from 2021 and compare it to this bmw from you know 40 or 50 years ago these surfaces are way way bigger and bulkier than you see on older cars so designers kind of have to make this surface appear smaller by sort of breaking it up into smaller pieces with all these little creases and lines the fact that manufacturing techniques around sheet metal bending have gotten so much better over the years also makes it so that designers just are able to add more and more complexity to these newer cars another reason cars are getting so complicated is just simply shock factor so because of the internet car companies are forced to design cars that immediately grab your attention you know beauty sort of takes time to absorb and reflect on but shock is sort of like this visceral response which is also why cars keep getting more and more angry looking i did a whole video about it but shock is a great way to get people's attention quickly right now car manufacturers are grabbing your attention through these wacky complicated grill shapes insanely complex cut lines all over the place and a lot of people complain about this stuff but the reality is that bad press is still better than no press and you can't talk about shock factor without mentioning the cyber truck the cyber truck uses a different fabrication method that didn't allow them to create these ultra complicated surfaces you see on other cars but this actually played in its favor so whether you love the cyber truck or hate it you can't deny that it ranks really really high in terms of shocking design and the cyber truck was shocking because of how simple the design was it's going to be interesting to see if car manufacturers sort of follow tesla's lead in that and see if they sort of go in the opposite direction that we have been moving towards for so long the third reason why cars are so complex is because of the lack of a unified vision on the part of the teams making them i've mentioned this in other videos but basically all of these different branches of the company don't agree on what the car should be and they often have competing interests so they tear the design into several different directions rather than working together towards a singular cohesive vision and what you end up with is sort of like a frankenstein combination that takes all of the worst of these competing interests it's like the worst of all the worlds there are probably other reasons why cars are so visually complicated these days but i think those are probably the main reasons the next question why is product design feeling more and more like a dumpster fire of habit tracking and data collection thinly veiled as a service no one asked for blah blah blah blah okay you are not taking crazy pills here in a lot of consumer tech the physical object whether it's a phone or a smart home device or something else is really just a vehicle for data collection and upselling so companies will sometimes even give these devices away for free because they want to have direct access to your purchasing and search habits and that's why the design is almost always like this very basic and unthreatening geometric form it blends into the environment and you kind of forget that it's even there that's a very intentional design decision i think a more truthful representation would be to put a bright red record button whenever they're plugged in but you know that's not going to happen for obvious reasons on the bright side people are kind of starting to realize what's going on with these devices and how their data is being used in questionable ways and new legislation is being passed to stop these devices from basically spying on us which is really great next question is how do i create a design that is beautiful this is a tricky one obviously beauty is very context dependent and ultimately you want to design something that is beautiful to your customer in particular so everything that i'm about to tell you here is really just a guideline they're not rules okay within the context of designing products or cars or whatever else i would describe beauty as visual balance and harmony and the best way to achieve balance and harmony is with good proportions so you want there to be like a hierarchy the proportions should kind of lead your eye through the design you can see these proportions better if you squint your eyes a bit so the details are blurred and you only see the bigger shapes if we use this alfa romeo as an example what i'm looking at is how this thing balances on the wheels so the wheels sort of ground the design and help it to feel stable because they're the only geometric shape that we really see on this design and this curve is the primary read this curve is called a belt line and it's the curve you probably looked at first in this image it sort of loosely follows the outline of the wheels and the wheel wells so it's kind of emphasizing them a little bit more and then you have the dlo or like this windshield glass the side glass that's sort of a secondary read and then finally some of the vent details and the headlights are kind of a third read at least from this point of view now notice how each of these proportional details gets progressively smaller your eye sort of knows where to look first second and third there aren't any competing interests here there's a clear hierarchy of visual information and there's a directionality to all these lines as well which creates that harmony i was talking about so notice how the beltline curve follows the shape of the wheels and the wheel well and the way the belt line sort of dips down really beautifully here makes the body appear really really nice and slim and then notice how this top profile curve blends into the belt line towards the rear of the car so there's a nice harmony between these shapes where they sort of converge really nicely and then the front and rear end of the car sort of beautifully taper out but it tapers downward more at the front of the vehicle and it's a little bit more straight in the back which gives the car its directionality sort of like an arrow pointing forward and then the rear fender of the vehicle is a little bit higher than the front fender of the vehicle which also gives it that sense of forward movement and momentum i mean we can keep going with this too look at how this intake here has a very similar curvature to the door cut it's the same with the lines on the windshield and the pillars here they all sort of follow a similar sweeping curve but notice how they get progressively more and more vertical until the middle of the car and then they switch directions at this parting line right here all of these flowing lines that follow similar directions and resolve at certain areas give your eye multiple resting points and there's a very delicate balance here like if i move this door cut forward a little bit it affects the way that the car is visually balanced because when you place this curve here it doesn't follow the curve of the vent or the curve of the side glass in quite the same way once again taste varies from person to person but i feel like there's kind of like this innate biological preference in all of us to seek out these visually settling harmonious proportions and shapes that sort of flow nicely in this way and it makes sense i mean spiky things are dangerous and soft round things are safer to me it makes sense from a biological perspective now there aren't any jarring angular lines or broken interrupted curves like you see in some of these other designs here now these designs aren't bad they're just not necessarily what i would consider beautiful maybe they're beautiful to the customer who would buy them but i think that the lack of harmony in these shapes is what one might consider to be maybe not traditionally beautiful you don't always have to use these harmoniously flowing lines and a clean hierarchy in proportions it's just a starting point beauty is incredibly difficult to achieve in product design because you also have to balance it with functional constraints so this car that we've been talking about the alfa romeo heavily focused on performance first and foremost so the fact that it's still so beautiful is pretty amazing you also have to remember that we're looking at this car only from the side view and it gets way way more complicated when you have to make sure that the object looks good from all angles it's extremely difficult to achieve this while balancing deadlines functional constraints business goals technical constraints so when it does happen you really really need to celebrate it and appreciate it so it's not always appropriate to have a product that's beautiful sometimes you need to be more functional or serious or utilitarian beauty is also heavily informed by cultural contexts this alfa romeo is understood to be one of the most beautiful cards ever made so the culture and reputation plays into our perception of it that's another big part of beauty so the story about the object and how it fits within a larger context is arguably more important than the object's design itself but that's a whole other can of worms that i'm not going to get into right now if you follow those guidelines of balanced visual proportions in hierarchy you're going to come up with something that's traditionally considered beautiful among most circles but it's one of those things that's a lot easier said than done i have an online course called form fundamentals where i spend like three hours talking about this exact subject the course itself is like seven hours in total but feel free to check out the link in the description if you want to learn more okay here we go nicholas cage time why do you like nicholas cage so much this actually directly relates to my philosophy about design nicholas cage is one of the few a-list actors in hollywood that takes huge creative risks i never misspelled anything not once not one time most actors will act in a way that is in line with how people would actually behave in real life situations this style of acting is called realism but nicolas cage has more of an impressionistic acting style so his thinking is you know movies are art most art doesn't try to strictly depict reality as it is so why do the same thing with filmmaking or acting now obviously the result in a lot of cases is insanely weird and it looks horrible especially when it's taken out of context that's why he's become such a meme phenomenon and it can be especially weird if the director and other actors in the film don't understand what nicolas cage is trying to do but it also results in some of the best performances you will ever see people say that he does a lot of movies because he's bad with money and that might be partially true i don't know but i'm pretty sure it's more just because he considers himself an actor and actors act in spite of all the meme content around him and people mocking him nick cage puts 100 into any role that he does and he always does what he believes is right for the movie he's always thinking of the audience and he's dedicated his life to his craft he gets mocked mercilessly for it and yet he still does it because he believes in what he's doing and he doesn't care what other people think that shows real character and passion and professionalism so that's why i love nicholas cage so much i greatly identify with his ethos around his craft and i try to approach my design work with the same level of dedication and humility that he does with his acting in terms of some of my favorite nick cage movies here's a list of them on the screen before we get into the next question i want to talk about squarespace i've used squarespace for my own portfolio site for over a decade it's packed with features that make it easy for anyone to make a website quickly and if you're making a portfolio site and you want to make something fast they have some beautiful layouts that will make your work shine the website builder is the best in the business so you can customize templates with simple drag and drop controls and if you want to go deeper you can customize your site fully with css there's a reason why i've been using squarespace for so long it's easy to use and fully customizable head over to squarespace.com design theory to save 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain using code design theory back to the video okay so the next question is should i leave nicholas cage here yeah i'm going to leave them in i'll leave them in for the rest of the video next question is what do you prefer form or function and why neither i do whatever i think is appropriate for the project but i think the formulation of your question should probably be revisited at least to me form and function are one and the same i thought i made up this idea of like form and function being the same thing but apparently frank lloyd wright beat me to it by about 100 years but let me explain what he meant the visual elements of a product still inform how it might function if we make a product look very sturdy and rugged we're going to treat it differently than if it was more delicate and fragile and therefore we will experience the way the object functions in a different way so even if we take the exact same product and change just the color nothing else that affects your perception of it and therefore how it's going to function this color scheme has kind of a 1950s vibe to it maybe you'll feel more inclined to play some johnny cash or elvis presley this one's got a 70s funk vibe to it it could maybe persuade you to play some stevie wonder this one's got a really serious stealth black thing going on so maybe you'd be more inclined to play metallica or something these designs are functionally identical right but the visual differences still affect our perception of the object which informs the way we use them that's kind of what i mean when i say form and function are one the visual aesthetics impact the function of the object and really it goes even deeper than that so if we look at the orange button on this coffee grinder it actually tells you that it's an important functional part of the product once again it's just a simple color change but the way that color change happens creates contrast against the white plastic that is an aesthetic choice right but also helps the function better because you can see one of the most important touch points on the design is the choice to make the button orange an aesthetic decision or a functional one to me it's hard to really tell and it's sort of blurring the lines between the two of them so that's why i say that form and function are one of course sometimes you're going to rely more on function other times you'll rely more on form if i'm designing an industrial kitchen interior i'll lean heavily on function if i'm designing a light fixture it's going to be more of an even balance between form and function but either way form and function aren't really two separate things they sort of play into it it's not that form follows function it's that form kind of is function they need to be treated holistically and you sort of need to balance the tension between them so the next question is how do you avoid decision fatigue while designing i feel like i often have these great ideas and then struggle to stick with one if you can't decide on an idea it's usually because you haven't defined the problem well enough so put together a criteria and a list of priorities for what you want your design to do and judge your ideas against that criteria if you're having trouble putting your criteria together it probably means that you don't understand the problem well enough so you need to do more research so next question elaborate on your iconic gray leather jacket my good friend george asked this one hi george i miss you buddy as for the question why don't we ask nicholas cage my snakeskin jacket thanks baby did i ever tell you that this here jacket represents some of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom what nic cage says actually is part of it leather jackets historically sort of have this rebellious thing attached to them i understand that aspect of it is kind of cringe one of my friends told me i shouldn't wear leather jackets because it looks super lame and like i'm trying too hard to look cool but i don't really care and i just like the way they look and i find them really really comfortable to wear this is actually my second leather jacket my first leather jacket was brown and i wore it for like 10 years almost every single day for 10 years but there are other reasons why i wear this thing all the time i mean a leather jacket looks good for pretty much any situation i can wear it every day and i do pretty much wear it every day and i don't have to worry about what i'm gonna wear it's really really comfortable and i especially like the weight of it and it's super breathable too so it makes me feel like i'm in like this little cocoon a good leather jacket will last you a really really long time i've had this particular jacket since 2018 and it's still in good condition like i said the one i had before this lasted for 10 years and i wore it every day i kind of missed my original brown leather jacket i'll probably get another jacket in you know eight years and it'll probably be brown again so next question how do i avoid creative block walk away from the problem and change your context it could be as extreme as traveling to another country or as simple as just like zooming in really close on a detail in your room that you don't normally focus on changing your context can mean a lot of different things it could mean learning a new tool or working with a different material or medium or anything else it could even just be changing your settings slightly maybe add in a cardboard cutout of nicolas cage and have him stand behind you for an entire video curiosity is really like rocket fuel for creativity so just explore something interesting and don't worry about whether it relates to the project you're working on there are also some exercises that you can do that i've mentioned in other videos sometimes i'll just draw a bunch of scribbles or blotches on a page and then just make sketches from that it's a good way to loosen up and do stuff that i wouldn't normally consider a lot of creativity is about finding the connection between disparate things so it can also be helpful to combine different ideas together that don't seem to be related you should also reference the answer that i give on the decision fatigue question if you're having trouble coming up with solutions for a problem it's usually because you don't understand the problem well enough so the next question is how do you handle a client that can't let go of a bad idea okay let's just pretend nikki cage here is my client it's always best to start with a clearly defined strategy and criteria for success with your client nikki and i would discuss a strategy up front the better i define what the goals are for the product with my client early on the easier it's going to be to steer the product in the right direction so for example let's say nick and i are designing a medical device for surgery this is like a dream project to work with nicholas cage that'd be awesome okay so we're designing a medical device one obvious criteria is that the design should be easy to clean and you should also be able to see when it's clean and nick and i both agree on that if nicolas cage makes a suggestion to make the device black because he loves wearing black leather jackets you can say that it might not be the best choice because it would go against the criteria that we both agreed upon together earlier on the process black would make it harder to see if the device is clean and you don't want to be performing surgery with an unclean medical instrument although i guess nicolas cage should never be performing surgery ever so you should listen to their input but you should also measure any decision against the criteria that you've set together and if you think that the criteria should change that's fine but there needs to be a business driven reason for it working this way takes the subjectivity out of design decisions you're no longer framing this as your client's subjective preferences or my subjective preferences but instead these are usability decisions these are business decisions now most clients are very reasonable if you structure the project this way but sometimes i have clients that still disagree with me on suggestions that i know are very clearly bad ideas one thing i've learned is that there could be a factor that they're not telling you about for any number of reasons maybe they have an investor meeting and they don't care about how the product is going to function in the short term and they just know that that's going to sort of catch the investor's eye so the functional constraints aren't really as important in this context maybe your client doesn't want to tell you that they have an investor meeting maybe it's confidential there could be any number of reasons why the point is even though making the medical device black is a dumb idea from your perspective it might actually make sense it's just that the client isn't giving you all of the information and they're not obligated to tell you really anything in very rare cases i don't think nicholas cage would ever do this but in very rare cases the client might just be irrationally clinging to a bad idea some people just have an ego and there's not a lot you can do about that as an absolute last resort if a client is just not listening to reason i'll tell them that the change they're requesting goes against my professional opinion and then i want it in writing that i advised against their poor decision so when i say that the client will usually get nervous and reconsider but even if they don't reconsider and their bad decision blows up in their face at least they can't blame me for it most clients are not like this they're very reasonable so i usually complete my contract with unreasonable ones and just don't work with them again honestly is design still a boys club short answer yes but i really don't think i should be speaking on behalf of women in design there is an organization called women in industrial design which i've linked in the description if you're looking for a support group so the next question is sort of more of a personal one but it's basically why have you chosen to teach work as a freelancer and make industrial design videos for youtube instead of say just focusing on one or two of them and a couple people asked me this question in a few different ways this is a little bit more of a personal question i'm going to answer this question and i also want to take this opportunity to explain why i'm so thankful for this community i also want to unbox my 100k subscribers play button that's why we're doing this q a in the first place the numbers are really not a big deal it is validating to get a whole bunch of subscribers and have people say nice things about your work that's really nice and i appreciate it but that's not what this is about at least not primarily okay so let's unbox let us unbox let's do this i have not opened this yet come on okay one more oh my god all right that's kind of cool got this little thing here congratulations on your subscriber milestone whatever thank you rick rick from society awards thanks rick and here is the 100 000 play button presented to john mariello for passing 100 000 subscribers look at that it's really really not a big deal at all it's pretty cool it's got the mirror finish it's it's uh it's it's uh you know it's a pretty pretty pretty pretty good okay so back to the question about why i'm doing all these different things so at least for me i see them as all connected they all kind of inform each other so for teaching students might lack experience but that lack of experience actually allows them to approach problems in really weird and beautiful ways so knowledge is kind of like this prison that keeps you constrained to conventions and the best way of doing things quote unquote it helps to create predictable results but it doesn't help with novel or innovative approaches so my students sort of show me that stuff and you know to be fair 99 of the time they're completely off but that one percent makes it worth it another thing is that my students don't know nearly as much as i do about design on an individual level but each one of them probably knows one or two things that i don't each one of them and if i'm teaching 10 or 15 students in a class that's 30 new things that i'm learning every single semester so that's 30 new concepts 30 new tools 30 new ideas that i'm learning every single semester for my students and then i can apply that to my consulting work or i can apply it in topics to discuss in my youtube videos and then for making design videos on youtube this is basically my research and development lab for my consulting work and my teaching methodology so it's this very low risk way for me to explore different ideas different design concepts different tools and then i share what i learned with you most companies are going to hire me or anyone because i can consistently deliver positive good results i don't usually want to try new methods with them unless they specifically ask me to and it's the same thing with teaching at cca where the students are paying a lot of money to be there and i want to make sure that anything i show them is only the good stuff with youtube there's really no real consequence if an idea or an experiment goes wrong like i might get some mean comments or something but who really cares and because i'm free from worrying about a positive outcome it often leads to some of my most interesting design work and on that note i have some super cool designs that i've been working on that i'm going to show you on this channel so be sure to subscribe if you haven't already and you know press the bell button because nothing matters anyway so the point is the videos also help clients feel more at ease working with me because they can see that i have a decent foundation of expertise if they watch any of my videos and i often share my videos with my students if it's relevant to the class discussion so all of these things are kind of intertwined and connected what i didn't expect when i started making youtube videos was that i would get actually like thoughtful considerate input from all of you in the comments now to be fair most of the time the comments are kind of ridiculous like this one for example and while i do appreciate the ridiculous comments because i find them really funny i really love reading the more thoughtful ones that actually have a lesson in them that i never would have considered there are thousands of comments that are just so incredibly insightful which is honestly a very special thing that i never expected to see on youtube when you start out as an industrial designer you have to focus very deeply on your technical skills and as a result of that your scope of inspiration becomes like really really narrow and it's important to do that for a period of time but by sort of broadening my scope and exploring all of these different things i feel like i'm a much more holistic designer than i ever was even just like a couple of years ago another really cool thing about having a youtube channel is that people look up to you i don't consider myself a big deal okay i'm like a very insignificant z-list niche internet micro nano celebrity with a very specialized tiny industrial design specialization okay some people like what i do and it's cool that i can make those people really happy by just sharing their work on my instagram or telling them that i appreciate their insightful comment the idea that you can make someone so happy with such little effort is a pretty special thing that i do not take for granted and on that note shout out to this guy who left a comment asking for a shout out i also have a discord community that we've all sort of built together and it's a lot of fun and it's great to see all these really talented designers from all over the world grow together and create amazing work there are some young designers in the discord who just have improved exponentially over the last year or two and it's been really exciting to see their progress and i'm so grateful that i got to play a very very small part in their progression now of course 100 of the credit goes to them okay i want to make that very clear they worked incredibly hard i just sort of nudged them in the right direction i know that a lot of social media is very fake because everyone's trying to show how great they are they're trying to show their best selves we're all guilty of that including me but there are young designers from all over the world who are watching the content and applying it to their own work in new and different ways that i never ever could have possibly imagined and and that's real that's something that's real i can't stress enough how grateful i am to be a part of that even though there's a lot of fakeness on social media that tight-knit community is real and that's one of the main reasons why i do this so anyway look thanks for checking out the videos if you enjoy this kind of content consider supporting me on patreon but otherwise have a great day and i appreciate you all watching all right everybody welcome to the first ever design theory q a we've got a ton of questions and the first question is why do modern car designs look so busy and complex yeah i don't think i'm ever going to do that voice again it's super cringe right

Channel: Design Theory

Views: 359,885

Keywords: John Mauriello

Id: 1rgd9TigWgY

Length: 27min 6sec (1626 seconds)

Published: Tue May 31 2022