I love great car sketches.  Recently, I put together two posts about great (and recent) car sketches.  Normally I use Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop to put together my sketches, so it was nice to see these designers and artists use mixed software and media to do the same.  Check out the full articles.  Both are hosted on my CarDesignFetish automotive design super-site.

Hot Sketches #1

Hot Sketches #2

I just finished up an article about the Local Motors method of critiquing.  It’s the traditional way of doing a crit, transposed onto an online community… and so far it’s very successful.

Here’s a snippet (and click the header for the complete article):

We often discuss the changes needed for automotive companies to be successful and “up-to-date” in an increasingly demanding technological world.  One of the ways design studios are starting to embrace technology is based on the tried-and-true method of critiquing the work of other Designers.  Group critiques, or “crits” as we affectionately call them, are a part of the design world that no other field or industry engages in.  It opens the floor to opinion from other designers, often leading to vastly improved products visually, increased effectiveness and appropriateness of a design, and market-leading products.  In fact without crits a design can end up short-sighted and a designer not pushed further towards a proper direction.

Go here for the complete article and let me know what you think:

CarDesignFetish

Recently Dustin, Arvind and I had the chance to sit down and discuss the production version of the Chevy Volt.  The conversation became one that we decided to document and place on the Fetish site.  It was an epic look at the car that is set to (hopefully) save the US automotive market.  In fact, it’s spawned a new series that we’ll be doing:  3-person critiques of vehicle designs.

Follow the link:

The 3-Man Critique of the Chevy Volt

I’ll be really getting into designing this blog tonight at the coffee shop.  I’m anxiously trying to figure out how to best represent different aspects of my design work, from web & graphic design to product and automotive.

Until then, check out some of the web design work I’ve done in the past, many of which included template manipulation and logos:

maklink.com/designs

I happened upon a link online to an article about an old project I was a part of in college over at CCS.  It was a show car for BMW, done for my 1999 Color & Trim class.  Based on the Z3, the theme of the vehicle was techno-fantasy and revolved around experiencing the nightlife and high fashion for someone in their early twenties.

I remember working on several parts of the design: the vehicle name (Ohm) and logo design, the seating design (which helped me get my internship at a seating supplier the same month as the debut of the vehicle at NAIAS in January of 2000), and other various parts.  Of course the vehicle was a team project.  I won’t take credit for it all by myself: all decisions were definitely made as a team, and my contribution was small compared to what the rest of the team created together.  However, there were parts of the concept that I focused on that remained pure to their intent, something that is rare even today in the automotive design world.

I thoroughly thank the rest of the team for their work with me.  To this day I’ll never manage to comprehend the immense work that went into the color choices, paint, materials, and more that the rest of the team worked to create and merge to achieve the theme we all were striving for.  I was definitely in their shadow, hunkering over my small contribution.  It was a fantastic experience to go through.

Here’s the link to the article, with a short excerpt:

Future Designers Present – Ohm – The Ultimate Concept Car For the 21st Century

…Each year student designers from the
Center for Creative Studies-College of Art and Design (CCS) dazzle onlookers
at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) with their fresh and
innovative concept show vehicle. This year, CCS is proud to present — the
Ohm — a BMW Z3 roadster transformed into a jazzy and electric retreat for the
nightlife driver enthusiast…