Designing Car Interiors, Volume 2: Studio Settings and Design Projects

Designing Car Interiors, Volume 2 is the second book of a series of three books. To recap, Volume 1 took a brief look at car interior design history and culture, with a particular focus on American, British, European, and Japanese design, in addition to touching on how socio-economics can bear influence on said design. To illustrate the design philosophy of said car cultures, I compared and contrasted the evolution of a number of my favorite vintage car dashboards through to the present day. The last section of the book introduced the basics of research, sketching, and rendering skills, emphasizing their importance to communicate and promote ideas in the context of a design teamand studio.Throughout my career, I have been privileged to work in some of the most interesting and creative automotive design studios. I was, and still am, fortunate enough to witness, and be part of what I consider an extraordinary process. With this in mind, Volume 2 shifts gears to look at several projects worked on in different design studios around the world, - I talk about the design studio settings, as well as concept and production vehicle projects that took place in these studios. Volume 3 will focus on writing a project brief, research, and project execution.Our Volume 2 journey starts in Barcelona at SEAT design, then moves across the Atlantic to California with stops at Nissan Design America and my first start-up experience, at the V-Vehicle Company.We finally jet across the Pacific to another start-up, Shanghai’s Qoros Auto Co., Ltd.Of course, for car designers, these are everyday occurrences, but for those not working in this profession or students intent on becoming designers, I hope the experience shared in this book gives you a decent idea of what goes on behind the scenes.As with the previous book, my intent here is not to critique or analyze these projects, but instead offer some insight, for those not familiar, into car design projects from sketch through to production car. Using actual projects serves to not only illustrate, but also bring this remarkable process to life.This is not an attempt at an historical account, but rather a way to illustrate the great effort and challenge that goes behind designing the car interior most of us take for granted, as we sit in ordrive them.