Apart from matters of horsepower, handling and ashtrays car design is a lens through which one can view a number of philosophical questions.
So today I will have a go sketching out what these might be. This list is not exhaustive, and is more a set of sign-posts pointing at some on-going problems which may not be resolvable: form versus function, aesthetics, semiotics, hermeneutics, phenomenology, approaches to engineering design. I wouldn’t Continue reading “Car Design And Philosophy”
The headlamps of this car never appealed to me. Gestalt theory explains why.
For a quick resume, Gestalt Theory is about how the mind is disposed to try to make sense of visual data. Your mind is inclined to fill in gaps to make whole outlines, and turn collections of individuals into groups and to pick exceptions from ordered arrays. The mind wants to sort out moving objects from a stable background. In short, it’s the equipment a mind would need to distinguish a moving thing in a complex background. Continue reading “Some More Gestalt Theory: 2008 Chevrolet Cruze”
Yesterday we ran a small celebration of the Citroen ZX. Here’s a small gallery…
…showing the car as it is, with some window-lines marked up and then some small revisions which I think are in keeping with the designs of the period. The third side glass is neither fully aligned with the lines from the main DLO nor is it markedly different. I chose to make it more clearly different.
For the third image I raised the line of the third side glass to the same height as the top of the wing. Now there are two lines. Continue reading “More Gestalt Revisionism”
The A-pillar of the 1993 Citroen Xantia has always looked wrong. Now I know why and the reason it had to look that way.
Unhappy with the actual car, I decided to see what would happen if I reduced the extent of the mirror sail panel so that more of the A-pillar showed. Read on to see how it looks if modified a little bit. It’s not as simple as just changing the shape of the black plastic part though… Continue reading “Applying the Gestalt Theory of Design to the 1993 Citroen Xantia”
Driven To Write 
