A touch of Intangible Design

Automotive OEMs, besides nurturing its brand’s values, have always faced two significant challenges: design processes and time-to-market. In a marketplace where a total design offer changes faster than any planned product obsolescence, design innovation is the commodity most sought-after. A means of putting new designs onto the assembly line quickly is therefore constantly high on the agenda. This is where Design and Execution could dynamically fuse into a holistic product launch strategy. Elgin DS is a consultancy that sheds new light on an integral digital modelling approach in the context of a contemporary design challenge. What is of particular interest to us is a cause and effect relationship between the innovative use of technologies, design talent, and project performance. Throughout time, vehicle design methods, which have migrated from coachbuilders to automobile manufacturers, and from hand sculpted clay models to digitally conceived designs, have both expressed new design trends and contributed to significant booms in the car market. The expansion of the automotive market and a grasp of how the market works at present can sometimes be taken for granted, but some of the preceding developments – such as, for instance, the introduction of the concept car as both a tool for design process and a clever marketing device – are still resonant in current design culture, and indeed, in our purchasing habits. Equally, “planned obsolescence”, a notion that affects the brand’s strategies at present, descends from early “auto design” heritage. Design processes have undergone major technological changes and are still in a state of development. In the early days, while car bodies had been fitted on a separately produced chassis, vehicles were bodied by independent coachbuilders. Some of them, such as Bertone, Pininfarina, or Zagato, have found their own workstyles. Their abilities to develop both aesthetic and functional innovation has helped them transcend coachbuilding to become renowned design houses. The arrival of unibody construction, however, made custom car bodying impossible as it channelled the art of design towards the modern compact car. The unibody approach offered increased vehicle safety, weight reduction, improved space utilisation, and ease of manufacture. It helped arrange faster assembly lines and considerably reduced the time-to-market. Subsequently, carmakers brought the bodying skills in-house, starting a bigger swing in product development capacities.汽车原始设备制造商（Automotive OEMs）除了深耕品牌价值培育之外，历来面临两大核心挑战：设计流程与上市周期（time-to-market）。在当前市场中，整体设计方案的迭代速度远超计划中的产品淘汰周期，设计创新已然成为最受追捧的核心资源。因此，快速将新设计投入装配线的路径始终是车企日程中的重中之重。这正是将设计与执行（Design and Execution）动态融合为完整产品上市战略的关键所在。 埃尔金DS（Elgin DS）是一家咨询机构，其针对当代设计挑战场景下的集成化数字建模方法提供了全新洞察。我们尤为关注的是技术创新应用、设计人才与项目绩效三者之间的因果关联。 纵观历史，汽车设计方法历经了从独立车身制造商到车企、从手工雕刻油泥模型到数字化创意设计的演变，既推动了全新设计潮流的涌现，也助力汽车市场实现了数次规模性增长。汽车市场的扩张以及对当前市场运行逻辑的掌握，有时会被视作理所当然，但此前的若干发展历程——例如将概念车同时作为设计流程工具与精妙营销手段的引入——至今仍在当代设计文化乃至我们的消费习惯中产生回响。同样，如今影响品牌战略的"计划式淘汰（planned obsolescence）"理念，也源自早期的"汽车设计"传承。 设计流程已历经重大技术变革，且仍处于持续演进之中。早期阶段，汽车车身被安装于单独生产的底盘之上，车身制造由独立车身制造商完成。其中部分厂商，如博通（Bertone）、宾尼法利纳（Pininfarina）与扎加托（Zagato），形成了各自独具特色的创作风格。它们兼具美学与功能创新的研发能力，使其得以跳出车身制造的范畴，成长为享誉全球的设计工作室。然而，承载式车身（unibody construction）结构的出现，使得定制化车身制造成为历史——该技术将设计艺术导向了现代紧凑型乘用车的研发方向。承载式车身方案大幅提升了车辆安全性能、降低了整车重量、优化了空间利用率，并简化了制造流程，助力装配线实现了更快的生产节奏，且大幅缩短了上市周期。此后，车企将车身制造技能纳入内部体系，推动产品开发能力迎来了更为显著的变革。