Maybe not the best place for a book review but it is so on topic I figured you guys wouldnt mind. You are the ideal audience. Retrofuturism: The Car Design of J Mays Brooke Hodge, editor, with an essay by C. Edson Armi. Exhibition catalog. (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; 2002) ISBN 0-914357-82-4 This publication accompanies the exhibition ”Retrofuturism: The Car Design of J Mays,” organized by Brooke Hodge and presented at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 17 November 2002 – 9 March 2003. Lucid articulation of the art and science of automotive design is a rare commodity. Still less common is a focused journey into the thought processes of one of today’s most cerebral and influential designers. The highly competitive nature of the business usually relegates such insight to retrospective studies conducted at the conclusion of a storied career. This monograph affords an amazingly contemporary look at designs that are still quite fresh out of the showrooms and salons as well as a few vehicles that are soon to hit the streets. While this work gives us a glimpse into the near future, and more importantly into creative principles of the recent past and present, we can rest assured that Mr. Mays and his staffs are exploring futures just over our horizon. Not surprisingly, a designer is perhaps best introduced by his or her work. Brooke Hodge, Curator of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), first presents J Mays primarily via two concept vehicles from Volkswagen – Audi, Mays employer upon graduation in 1980 from Art Center College of Design (ACCD). The Audi Avus concept debuted at the 1991 Tokyo Motor Show. A relatively obscure car known primarily to automotive design professionals and enthusiasts, it was an influential design in Mays’ personal education and a stepping stone towards the VW Concept One, a vehicle that nearly everyone can recognize. The Concept One, introduced at the 1994 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, was the prototype for the wildly successful New Beetle. While the Avus strongly influenced the Audi TT production car and furthered Mays’ understanding of the value of great designs of the past, its greater significance lies in the attention it garnered for Mays from his superiors and his subsequent creation of the Concept One. Both the Avus, the Concept One, and the production cars they presaged borrow their foundation from successful designs of the past (the Avus from German racing cars of the 1930s and the Concept One from the first VW Beetle) and launch themselves at the future. This is the heart of retrofuturism,”… the melding of an iconic past with a vision of the future.” The use of iconic designs of the past requires not only identification of those designs but a profound understanding of what makes those forms timeless. The original Beetle was intellectually dissected to make use of the “brand DNA.” The design of the Concept One is not only inextricably integrated with the heritage of the original VW but also a symbiotic part of the marketing of the vehicle. Mays realized that he would have a hard sell to upper management. As a consequence of that understanding the design became much more than the form and physical aspects of the vehicle. The marketing of the vehicle becomes inherent in its design philosophy and the design turns into something of a multi-disciplined production that encompasses the psychology of the market. Armed with the DNA and the understanding that marketing and brand are integral elements of a design, Mays applied market research largely in the form of “spectrum thinking and cultural overlay” to sell management on a design that virtually saved the company. With this introduction to Mays’ methods and background, Hodge brings us quickly up to the present. Since 1997, he has been Vice President of Global Design at Ford Motor Company. As such he is ultimately responsible for the designs of eight distinct marques. One of his more notable actions since taking the helm has been the creation of the “Living Legends Studio.” This design environment is dedicated to studying classic Ford designs and producing modern interpretations. The new Thunderbird, the upcoming Ford GT and Mustang, and the Forty-Nine concept car are all products of that studio. The real strength of this catalog resides in the essay of C. Edson Armi. A professor of the history of art and architecture at the University of California at Santa Barbara, he is the author of several books including the highly regarded, The Art of American Car Design: the Profession and Personalities, published in 1988. It was based on the strength of the interviews of designers in this book that Mays agreed to be interviewed. Armi’s appreciable understanding of the topic facilitates a substantive, if one-sided, discussion of underlying design principles while inviting an enlightening candor from his subject. Armi first paints a brief but accurate picture of the profession in general and then proceeds to illustrate how Mays distinguishes himself from his peers and forbears. While all design chiefs are in large measure marketing agents, Mays’ understanding of marketing as an integral part of design – not just a parallel responsibility – serves him well. Then the path that has lead Mr. Mays to his current position is retraced beginning with childhood in rural Oklahoma. After a stint at the University of Oklahoma studying commercial art and then journalism, he decided he wanted to be a car designer. Through typical and characteristic hard work he learned the tools of the trade at ACCD but did not find himself as a designer until he went to work in Europe. His analytic nature, perfectionism, and deep focus meshed well with the traditional German design tenants he found at Audi. This environment may have also nurtured the belief in a very close relationship between engineering and design. Designers “…should actively initiate and guide … engineering and even marketing of the company.” Mays reveals to the author many elements of his design philosophy as well as some candid introspection. He confesses to be “…just uptight” and not as spontaneous as the average designer; he characterizes his approach as “… intuition with an analytic check.” Refinement is of great importance to his method and requires that a firm direction be chosen early on in order to focus on refinement. J Mays believes in two components of car design: basic geometry and the overlay. The basic geometry is timeless and is an example of modernism, simply put, the assemblage of geometric shapes. This is the legacy of Mies van der Rohe and the Bauhaus. The geometry is defined first by proportion, then line and finally by shape. In addition to the German design sense, Mays recognizes the contribution of the typically Italian use of orthographic views in the refinement of proportion, line, and shape. He favors taut, convex forms. The overlay is perhaps the more subtle and original contribution. This reflects changing cultural values and owes a bit more to the spectrums and continuums that Mays likes to employ when applying market research to a project. Attention to contemporary culture is critical. Ideally, the marriage of these two components produces the “high-content message” or high concept (to borrow a term from film) – one or two words linked to strong visual elements. Success depends on creating meaning for the market and ultimately providing a positive feeling for the customer. In Mays’ estimation, automotive design and design in general have been largely unrelated. Through his perception of design as multidisciplinary, he hopes to unite these previously parallel paths. Hodge poses a series of questions for J Mays that serve to further illuminate the principles expressed in the preceding essay. The idea of iconic, retro, heritage design is reinforced as a method to promote brand identity. Several of Mays’ recent non-retrofuturistic designs are addressed and he talks about future scenarios as envisioned in conjunction with Phillips Electronics. Mays asserts that the future can be approached in three ways. If you do nothing, any future is possible. If you study the future, there is a probable future. Finally, if you take action with respect to the future, you can achieve a preferable future. (This requires vision.) Within that preferable future Ford and Phillips have imagined five scenarios which Mays briefly describes. These scenarios are overlays that are used as tools to shape the future vehicles and other products of the Ford Motor Company. The catalog concludes with a helpful glossary of automotive terms used in the text. These words are highlighted, providing a nice graphic clue to readers unfamiliar with the specialized vocabulary. This is characteristic of the book as a whole which is an informative read for the automotive design professional while still highly approachable to a more casual audience. Not unexpectedly, some of Hodge’s writing comes across as mildly ill informed. There are a few broad generalizations that would more than likely go unnoticed and accepted as fact by the general public but experts will surely be forced to quibble over some finer points. While the volume is liberally peppered with photographs, the photos tend to be somewhat impressionistic, otherwise artful, or perhaps simply available as opposed to illustrative of the text or beautiful. This fact was something of a disappointment but the insight and intelligence of J Mays design philosophies make this an overwhelming success. It is a joy to find an automotive designer so articulate, intelligent, and passionate who is willing to share those qualities with the general public. David Lynn 14 February 2003
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 19:35:37 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015