Monday, September 6, 2010

Leveraging Formal Identity

There is now clear evidence of the use of formal design language in the American cars. I am saying that ‘cause it is has gone beyond the grilles, badges and the ornamentations. Ford Motor Company has made few attempts in the recent past. And they (Ford) have done good job in some cases. We will look at all their attempts in the following post.

Btw, when I say formal design language, I mean that certain visual design elements are repeated on different models of the same brand. Note that the scale and proportion of the design element does get altered to fit the form. From the marketing perspective, it helps in building brands. If well conceived, I think it does. European car maker, particularly, the Germans, use it more often than others. Apart from brand building it sometime help customers connect the siblings. I would call this as a “consequence”. This is not a “Branding” lesson but branding is going to get important in this ever growing crowded car market with so many companies pumping in so many different vehicles.

Let’s look at the Ford’s attempts.

In the first example below, we are comparing the Escape and Focus. Here you will see the bumper fascia treatment in the tow vehicles is similar with the character line that forms the intersection of the front fascia surface and the natural extension (curvature) of the front fender surface. Also notice the fog light cutout. It also shares the bead-like detail around the fog light opening.

Although, the two vehicles do share these design elements, these will in no way assist in building a brand. This is because the visual design cues are not applied to the most visible or favorable areas of the vehicles. For example, the front grille fascias are completely different; there is nothing in common on the body side; and even the hood surfaces are different. So why would someone repeat the design elements. To me it seems that there was a direction to develop formal design language which in the course of the design process just fell through. Btw, you do see a similar fascia treatment on the rear bumper fascia of the Focus (image below). This is an example where a design element is repeated on the same product. It is done to enhance the integration of the form. Now that’s a different discussion.

In the next example below, we are looking at the new Explorer and the Taurus. Here you will see there are more visual design elements that are shared by the two vehicles. There is the grille fascia, the body side design including how the ground effect molded appliqué wraps around the vehicle body. Personally, I am a big fan of ground effects and I like the treatment on these Ford vehicles. It does lots of good things to the form. For example, it integrates the sheet metal surfaces with the wheels by visually balancing the wheel well position with respect to the wheel and thereby managing the wheel well gaps to give a tauter, sportier look to the vehicle. In the images below you will see similarities in the body side and grille fascia designs. You will also notice that the scale and proportion of the design elements are altered to suite the form. For example, in case of the design elements on body side along the side doors, the size and distance between the character lines near the belt line and rocker vary to suite the form. This is a natural evolution of the design element as it gets reused in the design process.

From the two examples discussed here the overall benefit of repeating the design elements (say, for brand building) will be greater in case of Explorer - Taurus case.

Finally, the challenge to the design community is to balance the reuse of the design elements such that they continue to appear fresh and augment the form they are applied to.

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