Interview with Ford Fusion exterior designer Dillon Blanski
An exclusive interview with Dillon Blanski, exterior designer of the new Ford Fusion, who speaks about the development process of the new global model.
Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you arrived at Ford?
I’m originally from Oklahoma and I went to College of Creative Studies here in Detroit, graduated in 2007 and started at Ford in August in 2007.
It wasn’t too long after I started here that I started working on the Fusion. I got to see the program from the sketch stage all the way to final tooling and stamping; the process it goes through to get a car into production.
Was your initial concept selected for development? What was that process?
Yes. One of my initial themes was selected and we started by working with a digital sculptor, building a digital model. And then to prove it out we went to a full size clay model.
From that stage we do some iterations back and forth between digital sketching and hand modeling on the clay until we come to a theme that we feel is representative of what we wanted the original idea to look like.
We competed with Europe as well. Where we were trying to create themes; each stop would be representative of what the next Fusion/Mondeo would be.
Then from that they selected a theme–kind of got a mix of European and US theme – so it was a global collaboration that resulted with the one design. The car was finished here in the US about a year ago.
What is this theme?
It’s called Kinetic 2.0; the current Mondeo in Europe is Kinetic 1.0 and we’ve evolved that form language with this vehicle.
It’s more or less based on the grille and trying to create this dominant upper grille and the rest of the car just flows off that with a lot of fuselage qualities about it. We tried also to give it a more muscular appearance.
Was this the major hurdle when translating the theme to the Fusion?
A more muscular appearance was just one of the things we wanted to bring to it; one of the hurdles was that we didn’t want the car to appear too masculine.
It’s got to appeal to a broad audience, so we had to dial it back at a certain point and we ended up with the car where it is.
Hopefully everybody likes it and hopefully we’ve created a product that will be accepted globally.
What sources do you look to for Inspiration?
Current trends in fashion, whether it be watches, jewellery, shoes, or clothing. I like to look at a lot of architecture as well.
When we were doing this vehicle, we kind of picked a few things in nature that we were looking at; specific animals looking at their muscular structures to generate the muscular feeling in the vehicle.
Well thanks very much, and congratulations on the Fusion!
No problem, and thank you! An exclusive interview with Dillon Blanski, exterior designer of the new Ford Fusion, who speaks about the development process of the new global model.
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I think Ford’s “One Ford” mission and vision makes perfect business sense, however I am not convinced that this will result in aesthetically pleasing cars from what I have seen already. I liked the kinetic 1.0 design philosophy and adore the Focus RS (Mk2), conjured up by Stefan Lamm and co but briefly looking at some of the new Ford car sketches they look oddly American and I don’t think North America should be leading the design on global models, if global models work in the first place, which they don’t.
For example, you can see that the Focus ST (Mk3) is completely wrong for the European market, odd at the rear, clumsy at the front and only in 5dr? Do the Americans realise the hot-hatch recipe? No, would be the answer and then to top it off they are going to do an estate version, why? Another example is when I look at the new Focus (Mk3) and compare it to the new Fiesta (Mk7), I think the Fiesta looks stunning for a small car, and rightfully so but the Focus seems as if it has been designed for function only.
I like what Ford is striving to achieve and the vehicles it has created in the past are icons and mean a great deal to a lot of people, just go to the Ford Fair in the UK and you’ll see the passion that people have for Fords of old. However, in design terms I don’t think you can paint the globe with the same brush, every country has its own unique taste and flavour for how a vehicle should look and I think that the design function should be treated differently when immersed in the “One Ford” plan.