In high school I took two semesters of Saturday High at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. These were transportation and product design courses offered by the school to high school students. While I ended up going in a different direction with my career, this formal training in ID at a young age has had a lasting impact on my approach to both design and engineering. It has also embedded car design into my DNA. I was scrolling Instagram tonight and came across this concept project by designer Roman Miah (@romanmiah) and felt like sharing it here.
One thing I've noticed in recent years is that the freelance, new grad, and hobbyist designers are doing a much better job than the established companies at designing pretty much everything. This is especially true – in my opinion – of transportation design.
I have seen many examples in recent months of projects like this: the "what would it look like if we modernized an iconic design". I'm not sure why Lamborghini failed with the Countach, or Toyota with the Supra (although the design has grown on me), but leave it to an independent designer to take the R34 Skyline GT-R and modernize it just enough to look like the original designer took a time machine to 2022 and started drawing.
The idea behind this concept was to recapture the design cues and unmistakably Japanese styling of the iconic Skyline's of the past whilst also looking into the future of GT-R. – Roman Miah (@romanmiah, IG)
The approach of referencing eras of design and modernizing them has been very popular in the fashion space since around 2020 and is starting to go mainstream across other medium as well. We are in an era of rediscovery in design. Technology has made it possible to share ideas and references like never before, democratizing design language across the globe. However, the algorithims reward consensus, which in turn results in a sort of "digital gentrification" that has been pushing trends harder than ever before. The shift into this new decade (delayed by the events of 2020-2021) will require artists and designers to regain control of what is rewarded as good design, and what is discarded as "bad" (sorry, but there is such a thing as bad design). It is my opinion that revisiting decades of truly timeless design language prior to the internet takeover is essential for the survival of the craft, lest we live in an Apple World by the time the decade is up.
Roman's inspiration behind his R36 may not be so deep, but it is a phenominal example of the point I am trying to make. This is an R34, tweaked just enough for 2022 and not 1% more. It's a zero-ego enhancement, one that says not every iteration needs to be revolutionary. The result is a vehicle that looks better than the R34, something that can hardly be said about the R35. Take notes, Nissan.
