DESIGN LANGUAGE
Design Guru Glynn Kerr on the intricacies of maintaining a recognisably uniform design language across a wide range of automotive products
IN AN IDEAL world, you should be able to look at an unfamiliar vehicle, and immediately know which manufacturer it comes from. Doesn’t matter if you’re seeing it from the front, side or back; it should be instantly apparent. If you have to look at the badge or read the inscription, the designers and product development managers haven’t done their job.
Motorcycles have a more difficult job than cars, especially from the front and rear angles, because there isn’t much width for designers to play with. Certainly on naked bikes, there’s a limit to the number of variations on headlights and instruments available. Even when a manufacturer establishes a clear identity, plagiarism — predominantly but not exclusively from the Far East — may make that task harder. But it will always take a while for those chaps to catch up. By then, the originator needs to have moved on.
Some companies have it easier than others. When the majority of the
products are painted red, with few alternatives, and they’re predominantly sporty, it isn’t difficult to spot a Ducati at a hundred paces. At one stage, BMW also had an instantly recognisable look (which a clay modeller there once told me was achieved by simply running huge radii over all the edges once the main shape was finalised), although that has diminished as the product line has diversified over the years. The wider the range of products, the harder it is to maintain a common design language, although it’s no less important if a company is trying to present a universal image of quality, desirability or innovation.
Honda have an enormously diverse product range. From generators to lawnmowers to motorcycles to aircraft, Honda have it pretty much covered. And yet they manage to convey a strong corporate identity across the board — an image of quality and consistency that is vital for sales confidence, which, in turn, allows them to sell at a premium price among Asian manufacturers. As a business model, simply being cheaper than all your competitors has its limitations.
Yamaha have a more difficult task. I don’t think my electric guitar, or the amplifier on my music system, have much in common with the motorcycles I’ve owned, but then that’s probably expecting too much. Even the market positioning of their acoustic products is, dare I suggest, higher than their twowheel offerings within their respective fields. But these are entirely different divisions of a corporation that happens to share a name and a logo. Unless the electronics wing is brought in to develop artificial noise for its electric vehicles (which is entirely possible; California has just passed a law demanding that all vehicles be audible at low speed), the two divisions are unlikely to share either technology or a balance sheet.
Comparing both companies’ twowheel line-ups at this year’s EICMA, the wildly different design languages these two local competitors have imposed on their current products is interesting to analyse. On the one hand, Honda have developed a design language of fairly conservative perfection. Even their topof-the-regular-line CBR 1000RR is restrained for a hyper-sport model and, as I noted earlier, even the $184,000 (Rs 1.25 crore) homologation RC213V-S doesn’t scream its abilities on the outside. This is all quite deliberate. The emphasis is always on quality and, for a Japanese manufacturer, refined understatement underlines that point.
Using Mercedes-Benz as an analogy might seem out of place, but the message is the same. It doesn’t matter
whether you’re buying a diesel taxi or the flagship S-Class, you can expect similar engineering and build quality. Ditto with Honda’s image projection. A Cub or an Activa scooter should generate the same ownership confidence as a Gold Wing (we’ll overlook a few exceptions, such as my 1983 VF750 which was recalled for a camshaft exchange in its first year, but if I recall correctly, Mercedes had a few electrical issues a while back too).
Moving over to Yamaha, the motivation-to-buy message is very different. Despite having owned six of them, and having worked exclusively for the company as design consultant for four years in the 1980s, I still have difficulty pinning down the image. It’s younger, sportier and more radical than Honda’s, and the designs give the impression of being more cutting-edge. But that also demands being more extreme, and extreme is less predictable from a sales viewpoint. It also encourages buyers to select on a model-by-model basis, rather than establishing a consistent brand loyalty which reaps long-term benefits. The advantage is that Yamaha can turn on a dime, and follow, or create, any new direction it desires. Honda, by defining their destination, are committing themselves to a set course. But as if to destroy my argument, they occasionally throw us a model like the Rune or the Vultus, just to prove that the Japanese hate to let a niche go unfilled. The Vultus is more Yamaha design language than Honda. Go figure.
While Honda have large, unbroken surfaces, and just a few strong features that define each design, Yamaha’s approach is much more complex, with intricate changes in line and surface everywhere to be seen. There is barely an area that’s flat enough to take a decal — a fact that is reflected in Yamaha’s simpler
The wider the range of products, the harder it is to maintain a common design language, although it’s no less important if a company is trying to present a universal image of quality, desirability or innovation
graphic designs. Parts are coloured differently to give detail, rather than by applying stickers. Honda do the opposite, with more adventurous graphic designs to pep up the sportier models. Each company goes its own way. Each has its reasons, but each has its own corporate identity which is clearly visible through its products.
By contrast, there are plenty of examples where companies have made no attempt to create a unique design language or, worse still, where they have hooked on to someone else’s to try to cash in on their success. One recent example I have an issue with is a new US company that’s been hitting me with its press communications for the past few months.
Having made its début at the Javits Center in New York on 9 December, the Vanguard Roadster certainly generates a strong impression. The overall balance is reminiscent of a 1960s Triton, with classic horizontal lines and an emphasis on polished metal. The frame tubes, which look like huge Desmo shaft covers, are a really nice touch. Okay, once you add stuff to make it road-legal, such as mudguards and mirrors, the prototype will lose some of its bass-ass looks, but that’s not my main gripe. All the design language — the cold, steampunk, no-human-interface, all-billet Meccano-like approach — screams “Confederate”.
The reason quickly becomes evident when you consider that the Vanguard brand is pioneered by ex-Confederate board member Francois-Xavier Terny, and design engineer Edward Jacobs, also previously with Confederate. And here we come to a dilemma. How much of a company’s design language belongs to the company or the designer that helped create it?
Either way, I have a feeling Vanguard will have difficulty producing its Roadster in anything like its current form for the promised $30,000 (Rs 20 lakh). That’s a lot of money for a motorcycle, but a fraction of what Confederate are asking for their own products; so, maybe, undercutting their previous employer is the goal. Let’s see what the final model looks like when it reaches production in 2018. In the meantime, I hope they revise the laptop-style seven-inch touchscreen, which acts as the instrument binnacle. Right now, it points at the sky and will be entirely unreadable to the rider in its current position. It looks to be hinged, but lowering it would gouge a chunk out of the tank once the steering is turned. Please tell me someone checked that before releasing it to the press — the forks look well and truly locked in the photos.