‘Why’ is designer’s most critical question: Bangle

World-renowned designer calls work with Samsung inspiring and challenging

Following is the sixth in a series of interviews with world’s top designers and scholars who will participate in the Herald Design Forum in Seoul from Oct. 5 to Oct. 6. ― Ed. 


An upcoming visit by visionary designer Chris Bangle is fueling growing anticipation about innovative designs his collaboration with Samsung Electronics will bring to the local IT scene as more companies here tap foreign talent.

Bangle, who resigned from German car maker BMW in 2009, is now a design consultant for Samsung. He also runs his own design studio in Italy.

When he was the chief of design for the BMW Group ― becoming the first American at the job ― Bangle garnered international attention for significantly updating the designs of the BMW, Mini Cooper and Rolls Royce.

A natural sense of curiosity, combined with a love for problem-solving, seemed to be the formula that sets Bangle apart from others.

“To me, (design) is a problem-solving challenge that is the most important, which means first understand the “why,” of the issue at hand, before getting on with the “how” and then the actual “what,” ― the design itself,” said Bangle in an emailed interview with The Korea Herald.

Looking into the future, he predicted that there may soon come a time when cars will be essentially used as display panels so that surface designing may become a thing of the past.

Bangle will be visiting Seoul for a second time this week to attend the inaugural Herald Design Forum. 

Q: In Korea, you received offers from both Hyundai Motor and Samsung Electronics. Why did you decide to go with Samsung?

A: I may have spent nearly 30 years in the car business, but my new enterprise ― Chris Bangle Associates SRL ― is a design consultancy without limitations or preconceptions regarding our clients and their needs. Samsung has become a valued and trusted client-associate; besides the complexity of themes we are involved in they are great people ― the interaction I have with their team is inspiring and challenging.

Q: As an automobile designer, what do you think will mark the future trend of car designs?

A: Car design is still in a phase of “car-toon cars”; overly expressive facial caricatures and undeserving emotional forms swathing ungainly proportions. Much of the proportional nightmares these car designers are trying to overcome is not their fault; the priorities that lead to cheap pedestrian-protection excesses and overly voluminous engine-bays are engineering, cost driven. Economic downturns take the mood with them, turning once visionary managers into arch-conservatives, and that is never inspiring for the designers.

After the “car-toons,” after the “butt-face” on the back of the cars has eclipsed the expression on the front for sheer goofiness; after car designers have exhausted all the gimmicky LED light-necklaces up their sleeves and begin projecting colored lights below the chassis like any decent lowrider; after beltlines go up so far in the name of “coupe-look” that you cannot get the tollway ticket through the side windows; after the track-widths of even the smallest cars approach Hummer-dimensions in the hope that some vestige of “powerful shoulder” will emerge from their insipid flanks ... what then?

Eventually car designers will experiment with negative-tumblehome; one of the “last frontiers” ― along with asymmetry and non-constant-surfacing ― remaining to be challenged. Conceptually there will be new thoughts involving “shared” vehicles, meaning ones that you use but don’t own, perhaps resulting in a new take on the lockable trunk ― or even a trunk you take with you. Imagine that; trolly-bag manufacturers in the front row for the next automobile paradigm!

Lots of interesting self-visualizing camera concepts will appear as traffic legislation and insurance premiums force people to document every single minute of their car’s life. On that score I have been predicting that the exteriors of cars will become visual display panels in the not-so-distant future; when that happens there is no “need” for form and surface designing; the imagery projected can take care of all of that even if the screens are flat. Then perhaps the automobile can fulfill its destiny to be a stupid box, once and for all. Actually the business model of making money while you drive by renting out the surface is attractive. And not just advertising; today one pays extra for the privilege of defining the color of your own car; imagine all those who would willingly pay more to define the color of the other guy’s car.

And then there is GINA, the flexible surface concept car from BMW; it has quite a following and also needs to be done in real life; probably first as a motorcycle to get the idea across.

Q: What do you think is the most important aspect when designing products?

A: “Product design” itself is not the same thing as “creating an artistic statement that has a function,” which is what many of the magazines seem filled with these days. To me it is a problem-solving challenge that is the most important, which means first understanding the “why” of the issue at hand, before getting on with the “how” band then the actual “what” ― the design itself. Many persons within an organization assume that the motives are clear for themselves and others, but unless this is first discussed openly great opportunities may be missed and efforts wasted following false leads.

Q: What made you pursue your dream as a designer? When do you feel the most happy as a designer?

A: I’ve been told I am naturally curious and have iconoclastic tendencies. I like to draw and to take things apart to see how they used to work. I suppose I am “naturally creative” even though I believe “creativity” per se is not a gift any more than intelligence is; what is important is what you are encouraged to do with it and I was always very fortunate to have encouraging people around me. I am too impatient to make a good “rational-thought” person; I am more likely to be with the “emotional” contingent. So, put it all together and I suppose “designer” is a good focus for my energies.

I am most happy when I am honing in on a solution that “squares the circle”: combines the apparent “opposite ends” of the solution spectrum. I am big on having one’s cake and eating it too ... design-wise that is.

Q: What personalities or characteristics are most required to become a great designer?

A: It begins in the mind of the designer; if what he or she is working on is “great” in their own heads then they are halfway there; if the solution asked for is not a re-hash of the normal state of affairs so much the better. I was always of the opinion that greatness is a measure of the journey, not just the result. 

Q: What is your most memorable design so far?

A: If it is something more tangible you are interested in, perhaps the concept and rough design for the “Art of Car Design” permanent installation at the Pinakothek der Moderne Museum in Munich, Germany is the single thing most memorable project in every sense of why, how, and what was done ... and most importantly, who was involved. In 50 days (and nights) we created a 12-meter-14 meter colossus of fluid marble (about 26 tons hang cantilevered on the wall), plaster, and associated car parts, all to the theme of an homage to car design. Please go see it ― no, touch it; it is the only part of the museum you are supposed to touch!

Q: What is your next dream as a designer?

A: I would like to see design evolve out of the egotistical phase it is in now, with an over-emphasis on the precise execution of the single person’s creative vision as the only available measurement of design quality. By reinforcing this idea we have systematically reduced the contribution of the collaborators and manufacturing people involved in reproducing the design to the lowest common denominator: cheap and quick, with tolerable quality.

I look towards a time when the designer is only one of many who contribute their creativity in the final product, and the people who actually make our daily-use tools, toys, and accessories of life are as important to the design expression of each item as the designer with the original idea was.

When the complete cycle of creativity has become a co-involved one, we won’t have so many disenfranchised youth seeking a chance to be acknowledged, so many marginalized societies trying to be productive, and so much useless ― and meaningless ― crap filling our landfills.

Q: What is your image of Korea? How would you define “Korean design?”

A: “Korea is what Korea does,” a good philosophy that works as well for design as it does for politics and art. Korea’s designers, on the other hand, are so well-integrated in all the world’s companies that it would be difficult to single out their contributions to, let’s say, a German car, and call it “Korean design.” Given that modernism is so international that it is difficult to find local tendencies, so folk art is often a reference point for a culture’s designs. But even that is not too apparent in the consumer products from Korea; where there seems to be room for national expression the exuberance is always mitigated by the necessity to sell in the global marketplace.

Student work is a good source of a “national design essence,” if it can be called that. Often from Korean designers I see a willingness to express visual idioms in a directness that nears the figurative. Of course, that is very watered down, but nevertheless I would expect Koreans ― and Asians in general ― to be receptive to visual languages that are more complex and descriptive than the simple geometries of the West.

Q: Please offer some advice on how to guide the Herald Design Forum.

A: Give demanding challenges to your experts that make the participants and audience think about the dogmas of design. You might even post outrageous positions and require them to defend or refute the premises. Encourage free-thinking fun!

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)