“Designers are the big-contract free agents in the automobile business, moving from one manufacturer to the next when the control offered is a little greater or the deal a little sweeter. Maybe that’s as it should be. Conventional wisdom says good design, or what we once called styling, remains the single most reliable means of moving iron over the curb. And bad design remains the quickest path to history’s junk pile.And maybe that’s why it’s so hard to become a car designer. The odds that a high-school kid who spends geometry class sketching cars will ever work as an automobile designer are no better, and are probably worse, than the odds that a typical high-school football player will play in the NFL”…. <More>

Tags: Auto, Design, Industrial Design, Innovation, Product Development, Technology, The Environment