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

Shout Outs:

0:00 Intro
0:07 Why Are Modern Car Designs so Busy & Complex?
3:13 Electronics Are Spying On You
4:13 How to Create a Beautiful Design
9:27 Why Nicolas Cage is Great Design Inspiration
12:08 Which is more important: Form or Function?
14:20 How to Avoid Decision Fatigue While Designing
14:50 Elaborate on leather jackets
16:11 How to Avoid Creative Block
17:18 How Do You Handle a Clien't That Won't Listen?
20:10 Is Design Still a Boy's Club?
20:27 100k trophy unboxing, plus personal questions
25:30 Shout Outs

All content written by John Mauriello. Edited by Bradley Heath and John Mauriello. John Mauriello has been working professionally as an industrial designer since 2010. He is an Adjunct Professor of industrial design at California College of the Arts.

Credits:

[budja]

Nono, there’s no excuse for the BMW XM. That’s an atrocity.

[andrewnymeyer]

I am a car designer at an OEM.

The problem is actually more process based.

Yes designers are trying to hide visual weight with extra lines but the main problem is really digital visualization and digital sketching within a car company.

Internal Visualization standards within automotive design are surprisingly poor. Very often car designers are designing cars for shaders on there computer rather than for reality.

This then effects sketching.

Designers forget that cars are essentially mirrors and they design the car as if it is a matte object and add a bunch of extra details/ uncontrolled surfaces to hide this mis understanding.

Also cars within the studios are only viewed in extremely sterile environments so the existing reflections are incredibly boring therefore causing designers to want to add more interesting reflection patterns that will be completely uncontrollable when the car experiences A more complicated environment.

Along with this most designers when visualizing a car on the computer arguing it within unrealistic lighting scenarios. Which then impacts sketching and how they think they should sketch a vehicle.

Also, it is easier to design more features within the vehicle through digital sketching designers feel as though they need to fill the page with more complexity again for getting the environment that the vehicle will live within.

The companies that rely more on physical models with reflective Dinoc (film designed to cover the clay during reviews) tend to have more simplified designs with better control and more timeless approach.

[pauljs]

Sometimes it's so over-done that from a distance you question whether a car was in a wreck. Are those panels smashed up or broken? Nope, that's just the crazy angular creases they're going with in the latest model year. Seems that "fractured" has overtaken "flow" in some areas.

[anttitube]

Tbh I liked the 1990-2010 styling since you could instantly recognize the brand.

[TTTzzzz]

1) It's generational. Designers have grown up with 'Transformers' and the likes. Many cars look like 30-year-old 14-year-olds have designed them.
2) With CAD there are no limits. Creases, convoluted curves, air intakes, etc are easy. There is no restriction.
3) Round is out.
4) The perception of beauty is less important. Aggression, power, and speed have taken over and exaggerated.

[abhas]

“Beauty is incredibly difficult to achieve in product design, because you have to balance it with functional constraints” 100% accurate, in any field of design

[Caphalem]

I'm so bored of the modern car look that even an old Lada is starting to looks pretty nice

[DJPGB]

I got sucked in by the "modern car design" title, then stayed for the whole video. Lots of good insights. Thanks. Just this: criteria (plural) versus criterion (singular). Those criteria are valid. That criterion is valid.

[JohnnyArtPavlou]

One of the things that I think is so fascinating is that we are all so visually literate. I mean we are all educated consumers. And in the auto design business… Or the auto business, they’re so good at using certain cues to make things look exotic or expensive or upscale… When it’s basically the same molded plastic tail lights… But they use the clear plastic on the expensive vehicles, and dorky shapes on the cheaper cars. And we’re all aware of it consciously or subconsciously. Not to mention all the special badging. And not to mention the fact that planned obsolescence goes back At least the 1955 with Harvey Earl.

[deansiracusa]

As someone who graduated from Art Center College, I’ve always preferred designs that look like they were penned by one person, and pretty.

You’re spot-on with the different groups at many car company’s design and engineering departments will be in different locations. This often causes disjointed results and it’s so annoying!

[j.b]

Still can't believe that these videos are free to watch. There's A LOT of great info here. Thanks!!

[elanthys]

13:39 that's my coffee grinder! 45 years and still works flawlessly. I love its minimalist design.

[ctrl-alt-bingo]

An interesting thing to talk about is how the mood of the era influences design, for instance in the 70's everything was about you so cars were flashy, beautiful, and felt opulent, the 80's was about a hopeful futre, naturally there were sleek, boxy, computerized designs, r31 skyline, grand national anyone? The 90's were simply a refinement on the 80's with enhanced futrisim, z32 vs z31 300zx, ect ect, the 2000's were a more melancholy time, so the designs became simpler, and more subdued, the 2010's were more reblious, and angry, so designs reflected that, and in 2022, the cultre has become almost jaded and angry thus cars look the same, but with some futrisim sprinkled in there

[thromboid]

A pet peeve of mine is the upward sloping window sills on modern (like, last couple of decades) car designs. I find they make it unnecessarily hard for the driver to judge the car's orientation while reversing.

[FlymanMS]

So nice of Nicolas Cage to stand still during the whole video.

[patrickm]

Great video. From experience, simple designs are easy to design, really tough to execute well. You need really tight tolerances to make simple look good and not cheap or crappy. Tight tolerances are expensive and really depends on your supplier. A little strategic complexity goes a long way to make cheaper production look nice. As far as looking good from all angles, I get a lot of success from designing in likely visible perspectives and focusing on attractive silhouettes. Attractive silhouettes make attractive designs.

[dfcx]

It's a bit weird to have to make car windows so small they limit visibility for the sake of safety. Only testing crash safety leaves out the avoiding crashes in the first place part.

[bikebudha]

The short answer: "Modern design are so visually complex because modern DESIGNERS suck".... You are welcom...

[inakab]

I’m a third year student in Russia (African by birth) I struggle with my studies here due to the language and it’s always nice to find study resources in a language I can fully comprehend

[billmcdonald]

One of my favourite examples of great design is the Contax RTS. It came out in the early 1980s, and it looked like no other SLR - it looked _organic._ In every modern DSLR, you'll see echoes of the Contax RTS.