Transportation Design Master UMEA University

 

Dear friends,
last month I have been invited to two final transportation design exam sessions in two different schools: the first in Italy IAAD and the second in Sweden UMEA University.
The 2 Italian days experience at IAAD in Turin
In IAAD Turin based school I had the opportunity to make two conferences on Car Design Management, first day to entry level students and the second day to the last year students. It was a good opportunity to explane a lot of things about design studio organization, project planning and its importance, project management and design strategy. Students were very curious about the topics and many of them asked questions interacting during all lecture period.
We talked also about the importance of making a good professional portfolio and mini-book in order to present themselves for a job application.
First the content of a portfolio which is always the king! Good content good chances to get a job, this is clear to all. However there are still too many students that prepare a portfolio with an approximative quality. We also talked about the rithm of a portfolio which is the interest and emotions it can provoke looking at it. This aspect is strategic and students are not always aware of it!
Before leaving the school I also looked at some portfolios finding some interesting ones and naturally giving some tips and advices.

The 2 Swedesh days experience

UMEA University is based in UMEA Sweden and when I arrived around 9PM I found all restaurants closed already even the one in my hotel kindly payed by the school (as well my trip). Anyway the young and energetic Chair of Transportation Design Dept. Demian Horst was very kind to find a sandwich shop still open offering me the dinner.

It has been my first time to a Swedesh design school and I was very happy about this invitation by the school that I thank a lot.
8 students from different nationalities all of them for final exam for the Master in Transportation Design, so 8 projects presented in 45m each with visuals and scale models.
Everyday 4 students, 2 in the morning time and 2 during the afternoon time.
I was the only external examiner in the committee.
I have to say that I was positively impressed by every student presentation for oral, visuals (in PPT with also videos) and scale models quality. I noticed that in UMEA University there is a good solid cultural preparation about each project breaf done with a serious research and benchmarking study, then brainstorming, sketches, concept choice and final renderings.

Naturally there were differences between students, but overall the level was very good for a year of Master. Coming from the real automotive design industry I noticed feww aspects not really adapted to real world demands and I tryed to help them with my honest critic.

In conclusion I hope to have given a good realistic support to all students, looking to go back to both schools soon!

Tips on Transportation Design Courses

Dear friends,
today I write some tips about Transportation Design courses. Every time I receive an email from you asking about Transportation Design courses I often am asked about Math and Mechanical Engineering, this type of questions come mostly from students in India or Middle east countries.
I am writing about car design courses to make it clear that in Transportation Design schools it is not a mandatory requirement to have knowledge about Mechanical Engineering or Math and the reason is simple: we study to become car designers not engineers!
I have tendency to believe that this type of thinking is related also to local culture...continue reading click: Transportation Design Courses Tips 

Image Art Center College of Design student at work (Via ACCD blog)

Car Design sketches research

 

Dear friends,

this beautiful rendering is work of Jummo Park car designer at Nissan it is a great reference for all of you looking for good professional car drawings to learn from.

Searching for car design sketches,illustrations,digital art, renderings, tutorials, demos is very important for beginners. Transportation Design students or lovers need good quality references to see, understand and learn. If we want to draw well cars we have to follow car sketching lessons, but also we have to help ourself when our teachers and friends are not there with us to give us a tip or make a quick demo.
In this particular case we have to search for car shetching references and better quality we find the better for us.
Keep on reading clicking: Search for car design references

Car design mini portfolios: mistakes to avoid.

Dear friends,
recently I received by email a new small mini portfolio in Pdf format from a young design student asking me for some tips and advices. As usually I do I went through it with attention, it was made of 17 pages with sketches and color rendered illustrations of final chosen designs.
At a first glance it looked like something put together with a certain reasonment and order, a sketching research step for each design proposal and also some color illustrations for the final chosen design with nice prospectives and dramatic color choices.

 Mistakes I have noticed
The reason why I decided to publish Lucian Nicolae Acatrineis's projects presentations is because to me they are a very good and professional example to follow in order to make a very good mini car design portfolio.
The mini book I received by email was not like those great drawings presentations, it was rather focused on interesting rendering techniques and...keep on reading clicking: Mini portfolios

Car sketching is your food

MiTo research sketches by Tamila Abuseridze

Today I would like to tell you about car designers favourite food: sketching cars!
Several times I wrote about the importance of sketching cars correctly and the image here published made by designer Akos Szas is an example. The car sketches composition about a VW project proposals shows how exciting could be drawing cars. I imagine that Akos's drawing is part of a larger series of presented works, what is very interesting and well made is the composition and all detailing done.
Keep on reading clicking: Car Sketching is your food

The emotional Car Design

Dear friends,
when we listen to talk about car design often we hear words like "cool, love it, hate it, beautiful car, sexy, muscle car, strong carachter, dall, sad, happy, elegant, show off...." at so on. What is all this about? About what are we really talking? It is clear to me that to describe the Design of a car is something that has to go through our emotional inner part. Yes we talk about emotions!
If we read about client first choice to buy a car (statistics) we find that very often #1 choice is Design, exterior Design and after Interior Design, after real dimensions functions engine performance consumption...etc. etc. Good Design sells and for a small city car as well as a sporty coupé Design is equally (almost) emotional. Car design is an emotional affair for...to continue click : Emotional Car Design

Image: Bertone Lancia Stratos



University and Design Art College

This week I received an email by an italian young student passionate of Car Design asking me for help. How do I become a car designer? I explaned that first of all he had to show me few drawings just to understand his level of talent before telling him the all process to follow. Few days later I received, by email, some sketches done by him and I found a certain talent! So, according to his motivation, I wrote him back telling him that he was elegible to try for an admission interview at design schools. I explaned to prepare at least 15 drawings on a A3 format, plus his quick sketches and to go visit a short list of italian design schools.
The objectif was to chose the right school and start the car design education cursus. In other words to get him in the right process.
I was surprised when I received his email and the reason is the following; he told me that his intention was...Keep reading here.

Image CCS Detroit

How do I choose my Car Design School?

Dear friends,
This is the time everybody is searching for a good Design school to attend next academic year. In Transportation Design , in some ways, it is easier to choose because there are less schools. At the same time all these schools are in competition with each others and offer similar programs, similar methods and similar contacts.

Now the question is: how do I choose my Transportation Design School?

There are some Design schools that are very famous in this discipline like: In USA Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and CCS in Detroit. In Europe we could name Pforzheim Schule in Germany, or State College in ParisFrance, or IAAD and IED in TurinItaly, or UMEAUniversity in Sweden, or MAMI International in MoscowRussia. In Asia TCA Tokyo in Japan and so on.
Now lets’ be careful because all these schools have “similarities” but also “differences” and sometime those differences are important.
The main element to make your choice is: to continue your reading please click "Design school choice".

Image via Art Center College blog The dotted line.

How to present our projects.

Dear friends,

It might sound stupid to you to talk about “how to present your project”. Everyone for months works on projects from A to Z, for weeks we make ideation sketching – concept choice – color sketches – explanation drawings – final renderings – models. Why should we talk about “hot to present all this”? Simply because too many times I participate to presentations during which the oral part is poor, in other words students don not pay too much attention to their oral preparation when presenting their projects.
When we start to talk in front of a board of people we have to catch their attention using our words and body language, this part will make a lot easier to the audience to understand our drawings and exposed painted model.
Now I am not telling you to become a sort of showbiz people! No David Letterman or Jay Leno. Not at all. What we are looking for here is a good balance and coherence between your project (drawings, renderings and model), and what you tell to present it!
You cannot explain how your car opens if you “do not have” an explicative drawing of the opening system with arrows and written notes. At the same time you cannot forget explaining how your car opens if you “do have” the full explanation drawing!

The introduction
What I am asking you to do is a simple exercise: use your drawings and stick to them a well-written sentence, words + drawings + model! If we are talking...to continue reading click here thanks.

Image: Walter De Silva assisting SPD (Milan, Italy) students Audi Project final presentation.

Car designers at work, how is it?

Hi friends,
some of you asked me recently to describe a day at work for a car designer and I promised I was going to write a hub about it. So here I am trying to write about this unknown working envorinment. First of all I want to say that to be a car designer is a very special thing always for all lucky people like me. We are lucky simply because we had the opportunity to study what we love and ended up working for what we love, talent is the most important thing (no talent no job) and professional attitude is second most important thing to have to play the game correctly (discipline, be humble, hard work).
In general car designers work in design studio in which they have all tools to perform at their best, paper, colors, markers, chalks, color pencils, computers, all sort of computer illustration programs like Photoshop,
Keep reading !

Simple rules to draw a car sketch in top view

Hi friends,
today I'll try to explane very quickly how we can draw a car in tip-up perspective or top view perspective. This time we will try to make it in 2 steps. Step 1: as you ca see from my preliminary drawing I tried to sketch a basic shape in perspective (the car body) plus another one on top (the cockpit), I used as reference 1 point perspective vanishing point (indicated as 1 V.P.) the horizontal lines are going to infinite therefore they are parallel to each others (indicated with the laying down 8 symbol). The ellipses in this perspective are quite compressed and the minor axes are always going to the vanishing point ( indicated as 1 V.P. and look at arrowed lines). Before passing to step 2 lets not forget to draw our center section very important for judging proportions (indicated as center line), last thing is the shadow of this shape indicated on the ground.
Now my advice is to make several trials following these simple rules, before passing to Step 2 .

 

 Step 2 consists in modeling the geometrical shape we drew to obtain a car shape in top perspective. Following our center section and perspective lines we can draw sections to give a real car shape according to our taste, at the end we can add also reflextions lines on side body and glass areas and later we can apply with markers some shading.

Design students and the crisis

Is the crisis damaging young design students?

Some time ago I read an article saying that the actual economic crisis was strongly damaging young design students prospectives to find a design job in the automotive industry. The crisis tauched the automobile more then another type of products and many jobs in this sectors payed a high price. GM is an example in US, but also in Europe and Asia other car companies had to lay off lots of workers trying to rebalance their economic accounts (preserve cash flow). This happened also in their Design departments using several types of formulas like pre-retirement plans etc. etc.
Design schools and Design students in car design are worried because several Design studios are not offering jobs or internships or they are hiring but for a very limited place numbers. So what to do? Is this negative? Should this declare the end of a passionate job opportunity?
I would like to see this situation on a different point of view and a positive one...continue reading here

Luciano Bove interviewed by Virtualcar

Hi friends,
today appeared on Virtualcar.it an interview about me. In this interview I tell my story about how I became a car designer, when my passion became really strong and convinced me to confess it at home asking for a different type of school a design school.
I hope that this story might help those that do not know how to tell their parents about their will to become car designers or designers in general. At the end of the interview also some suggestions and tips as alwayes.

To keep reading click: Luciano Bove's interview

How to get an internship in car design

Hi friends,

yesterday I have got an email from a design student asking me to write about how to get an internship in Car design.

It is a cool question to which it is not easy to answear, I'll try anyway according to my daily experience. Lets start saying that every car company has a method in selecting young talents, so what I am going to tell you is not a sort of universal way to do it. In general, where I work, we do receive by email or by traditional mail service portfolios and CVs with a presentation letter.
Those are the 3 important elements to have at a very high level, if I receive an internship request and the CV or motivation letter or (worst) the portfolio is not so good...well that is it, I stop having no interest to go on.

The CV
The CV must be good, very professional, precise without lies (we see them right away). The CV can have a nice editorial graphic same as your business card. The CV does not have to have your photo! For more info about CV read my article "To get a job start from a good CV"

The motivation or cover letter
The motivation letter is very important for some companies like french and american ones, it is a letter in which the candidate presents ...continue reading here

Car design training sketch it!

Often I visit Art Design Schools, Industrial Design Schools, Art Colleges, and several times I find interesting illustrations but poor sketches and many times few design projects or art students with a good sketch book. In car design training it is a must to learn how to sketch well in order to get all the techniques and the self confidence to move over in the experience and be betwenn the first in design classes. Unfortunately, lately and mostly in Europe, design students do not pay too much attention to this aspect for their career training. I remember that ,when I was a student at Art Center College of Design, to have a sketch book was a must starting the very first day. Even if it was difficult for me at the beginning with time I got better to the point of earning that important self confidence that gives you the real feeling you can draw about anything therefore cars,too.
Pforzheim University of Applied Science, Art Center College of Design, CCS Detroit, Royal College College of Art, IAAD Turin are some of the top Design schools where it is mandatory to start learning by drawing and sketching...to continue reading click Sketch it!

Portfolio in automotive design

Hi friends,

at the end of my summer vacation in Italy I met a young ex student from a british car design school who wanted to show me his portfolio for some tips before looking for a job. As usual I told him that I was happy to do it and so we did. He came with his portable PC and showed me a sort of Power Point presentation with all the selected projects, at the end he also had his CV. I asked him to show me the presentation again, at the end of the second round I started to give him my constructive critic.

Car Design school

Usually a good design school has some courses about how to put together design portfolios, (Art Center in Pasadena US and IAAD in Italy IT do) this was not the case. The british school has a life of about 5 years which means that it is very young in the design education business and it is no guarantee for a good training. I think that the transportation design teacher was ...continue reading clicking here

For the italian language version click Virtualcar

image by cardesignwork by Wissem Soussi

Last year of school, soon I'll be a designer

Hi friends,

for many of you this is going to be your last year of school. You will finally get your diploma and be ready for job interviews with the support of your portfolio.

It is not a case that the photo of my post today is a "portfolio case";in fact I would like to remember that to obtain a great outstanding series of projects you must work hard during this last year.

The final year is the most important one, you will put together the technical experience gained during your first years and also your personal Design philosophy that you are forming in your head since the beginning of this adventure.

You will have the chance to make several important projects and some sponsorized, it is an opportunity not to miss. Take care of all your sketches, illustrations, sketch-books, take photos of your models, start thinking how you would like to present all this at the end of the year. How is going to be your portfolio? Too soon to give an answear, but start thinking about it. This idea has to follow you for about 6 or 7 months untill you will really start thinking about packaging your "book".It is going to be a part of your "image".

Another important aspect to take care of is your CV and the English TOEIC Test level (in Europe a young designer must have a score of at least 700 points). Many car companies do not hire if you do not have a high TOEIC score, so start searching for info (you can get it on the net, but also in my "articles").

Good start and good luck!

Automotive Design Feeling

Hi friends,

yesterday Virtualcar.it web site published an article of mine in which I tried to explane "the Automotive Design Feeling" that should be in any good designer in order to create beautiful cars (the Audi sketch made by the inhouse designers is a good example). A question of sensibility, inner talent, artistic quality.

It comes with a lot of exercise starting from school (I remember my "lines free hand " exercises at Art Center), it is all about sketching and having fun with your drawing tools to produce quality and not just quantity.

Here the link for the full article in italian language (sorry for those do not speak italian) click: Sensibilità e Car Design

Exercise your creative talent the most you can!

Hi friends,

I decided to write a post about the importance of exercising your creative talent because I find young students that fall in love with their sketch rendering quality rather than the content of it.

It is important to understand what type of balance you have to reach between talent, creativity and technical skills.

This article is written in italian language (hosted by an italian car design website), but you can translate very easly...so if you are interested click Virtualcar.it and you will find what I wrote.

Source VirtualCar

Design education: final exams in Transportation Design

Hi friends,

this time an article in italian language that I wrote for VirtualCar an italian website specialized in car design.

Tempo di esami di fine anno

«Nelle diverse scuole (Italia ed estero) è tempo di esami di fine anno. Ciò accade anche nel “Design education”, le scuole IAAD e IED di Torino così come la SPD di Milano hanno numerosi allievi alle prese con la preparazione degli esami finali…

Cosa sono gli esami finali nel settore del Transportation Design?
In genere un esame finale consiste nel presentare ad una commissione il proprio progetto di tesi. Questo progetto in alcune scuole è sponsorizzato da aziende automobilistiche o dell’indotto, in altre scuole è semplicemente un tema libero cioè proposto dall’allievo. Nel primo caso la commissione è formata dagli insegnanti del progetto più...per continuare la lettura cliccate Virtual Car

Fonte Virtual Car