Sometimes I get messages or emails asking: “How much money designers make? How much do you earn? What is a designer salary?” I cannot answer to those questions because a part of the answer is very confidential and private, but also because I am not an expert about this topic. Salaries can variate from country [...]

Cadillac will not incorporate European design features under the direction of former Vauxhall design boss, Mark Adams. Cadillac will maintain its characteristic sharp-edged Art and Science design theme under new British design boss Mark Adams.

Schreyer says designers need to stay ahead of customers’ expectations When Kia Motors released its ambitious K-series, represented by the premium sedan K9 earlier this year, auto enthusiasts were more than thrilled. The vehicles were nothing like the ones Kia had shown before. The cars’ faade resembles that of a tiger and the interior is [...]

Establishing an automobile company isn’t an easy task. But the process has been the same for almost all manufacturers: get the mechanical parts right, and then make it look good. That’s exactly what Hyundai has done, says Casey Hyun, creative design manager in charge of brand design strategy and vision at the company’s headquarters in [...]

Mazda design chief Tamatani says cars “must send a stong message” [...] I tracked down Mazda’s chief designer, Akira Tamatani, to find out if he goes about his business in the same free-spirited way as the rest of his colleagues. All the signs were promising; this is a man who started his career working on [...]

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be, said J Mays, Ford Motor Co. chief designer. Earlier in his career, at Volkswagen AG, Mays was responsible for designing the Volkswagen Concept 1, the concept car that eventually became the “New Beetle,” a modern take on the beloved VW Bug, and the basis for the sporty Audi [...]

Christopher Chapman’s goal: Refine bold styling Every two weeks, Christopher Chapman makes the rounds at Hyundai’s Irvine, Calif., design center to see what his team has in the “corner stack.” The “stack” is a pile of index card-sized sketches on the corner of every designer’s desk. For Chapman, Hyundai’s U.S. design boss, it’s a way [...]

In the digital era, every video game is a potential showroom. But the relationship between game developers and automakers requires some creative licensing.

What if automakers could slash the weight of their vehicles 30%, 40%, even 50%? A panel of top designers will discuss that Thursday in Detroit as part of the annual Michelin Challenge Design contest. Reducing vehicle weight is one of the most challenging and rewarding areas in automotive development.

Dreams have always been the currency of auto shows, where the admission price buys unlimited fantasies of awe-inspiring cars that never get dirty, break down or gulp premium unleaded at $4.50 a gallon. But before the latest models and futuristic design studies could take form in sheet metal, somebody had to dream them up. In [...]

Automaker wants to shake up company culture to allow more creativity. Toyota City, Japan – After decades of emphasizing staid reliability, Toyota wants to start running with the cool kids. In a new approach announced Monday, the company, Japan’s biggest automaker, said it was overhauling its development system to give engineers more freedom to experiment [...]

Cast your mind back to last year’s Shanghai Motor Show and you’ll surely remember Volvo’s arresting Concept Universe. Andreas Nilsson, Volvo’s young and enterprising Design Director – Strategic and Interaction, was the man behind it. Nilsson is a rare specimen in this industry – in thirteen years since leaving Coventry with a Bachelors degree in [...]

BMW’s chief designer predicts that tomorrow’s cars will be controlled by voice commands, gestures, and touch screens. Car design is in a state of flux. The designer’s job used to be about tail fins and chrome. Then it was all about cup holders and plastics. Today, as communication technology invades the vehicle, it’s just as [...]

Trained at the Royal College of Art, Stefan Sielaff joined Audi in 1990 becoming head of design in 2006. Wallpaper* caught up with him at the flagship Audi centre in West London to talk about the marque’s involvement with architects and urbanism, and his thoughts on electric car design.

A veteran designer talks about global design, national design and why he doesn’t follow trends. With an automotive design career that includes standout work for Audi (AVUS concept, ’91) and Volkswagen (Concept One ’94), with positions in Ingolstadt (two stints, with the second including participation in the development of the TT), Munich (with BMW), Simi [...]

An interview with Carlo Bonzanigo, head of international cooperation agreements and concept cars at Citroën Styling. In Italian. Perché è importante il design? In una ipotetica scala di importanza, a che livello si pone rispetto alla funzionalità e all’affidabilità? “Con Design – inteso nella sua accezione più corretta – si intende non solo l’aspetto estetico, [...]

Personal Mobility, this is perhaps the most used description for what automotive design is trying to become, of the future of mobility. Often, and in certain countries, it has a linguistic connection to gear that helps physically impaired people move around comfortably. The car industry is desperately trying to shake that connotation off but at [...]

With the entire automotive world focusing on China at present, Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design (SD) has announced the creation of a new graduate program following that trend.