Written by / Chang Bing
Editor/ Zhang Nan
Design / Shi Yuchao
The BMW XM Concept, released at the end of November last year, is BMW's most radical and rebellious work in the past two decades, and the design community initially commented on it as critical and demeaning. In particular, former BMW designer Frank Stephenson clearly believes that the XM Concept is a backwards in design, and he analyzes in detail the complex front line, over-design, unbalanced proportions, and meaningless detail bends through a long video... And so on, sharp criticism has aroused widespread attention and resonance.
Those familiar with the history of automotive design may find the criticism of XM Concept's hot eyes a bit familiar. Yes, the BMW X coupe concept designed by Chris Bangle more than twenty years ago and the E65 7 series and E60 5 series have also attracted harsh criticism, but these bold designs have proved to open up a new horizon for car designers around the world, the luggage design of the superimposed body has changed from the radical design of the year to today's conventional design, and the concave and convex flame surface has become the only lasting trend widely accepted by brands around the world in the past two decades. And there is still no new form that can replace it.
In the face of radical design works, the market's reaction has been positive. Although Chris Bangle's design was boycotted by BMW employees and the media, the insistence of the board of directors led to a rapid increase in sales – because the public showed a strong pursuit of radical design. Whether it happens to be the right bet, or if it really predicts the changes in the consumer psychology of the masses in the new century, in short, the results are positive and positive. Twenty years from now, XM Concept is expected to be the same.
After the initial criticism of the design industry has passed, many media reviews have begun to try to understand XM's design, once carefully observed and thought, you will find that the stimulation brought by this subversion of tradition everywhere is addictive, it forces you to constantly compare the difference between the new design and your own traditional cognition, who is right and who is wrong is no longer important, because the excitement of learning new knowledge brought by the contrast itself has been exciting.
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As the world's leading brand, it does bear the industry task of opening up new areas of automotive design, otherwise all brands are rolled in the original track, and no one can maintain a competitive advantage for a long time.
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Plans for official mass production at the end of 2022 also express BMW's resolute attitude. As the world's leading brand, it does bear the industry task of opening up new areas of automotive design, otherwise all brands are rolled in the original track, and no one can maintain a competitive advantage for a long time.
Each excellent new design will spread to other brands in a certain period of time, go through the process from novel to ordinary, and then need the head brand to propose a new design, leading the new stage of popularization and development, other brands in time to follow up and evolve and develop, make a prejudgment of the continuous cycle of each new design, and decide to follow, stay away from or even do the opposite, which is the basic law of the entire automotive design community.
But aesthetics is not a natural law that exists independently of people's subjective consciousness, it is deeply influenced by the characteristics of the times and the humanistic background. For example, The Elegance elegance, Balance balance and Beautiful beauty, which have always been regarded as the inevitable pursuit of any car design, have been abandoned by many designs. Impressive and Shocking impact are beginning to become a design pursuit that can attract the attention of younger consumers.
This aesthetic is characterized by the progress of the times that every brand must always remind themselves of - it is very dangerous to stick to a design for a long time. Some of the brands that lead in sales are prone to make mistakes on this issue, and the extreme confidence that comes with sales makes them keen to replicate and expand the same design, even if it is updated across generations, only to make subtle evolutions rather than full innovations. This will lead to the gradual solidification of their brand image, design and technology positioning, and in today's era of hyper-interconnection of information, solidification almost means aging, so it is no wonder that a new generation of young consumers have lost interest in some traditional brands.
The emergence of many new car-making brands has broken through the inherent rhythm of slow updating of traditional brands to a certain extent, and also broken the layout of different brands playing different roles and divisions of labor in the field of design development and innovation.
The difference in the degree of understanding of new energy technology and the degree of acceptance of new brands further differentiates the new generation of consumers into different population types, and also brings full possibilities for establishing new traditional rules of automobile design and establishing new design aesthetic standards.
Coupled with the extraordinary development speed of New Chinese Brands and the new recognition of the importance of design, together with the explosion of Chinese design diversity, sharp attacks, reproductions of classics, and three-dimensionalization of the two-dimensional world... And so on, new styles have sprung up in the last few years. The old-fashioned positioning of independent brands that have been following the design for a long time began to fade rapidly.
It is believed that in the future automotive design industry, the aesthetics and concepts of professional designers will be challenged by new works of peers, which will often occur, and the old model dominated by a small number of authoritative brands will gradually disintegrate. This is a change brought about by many new brands, and it is also a gratifying change brought about by the progress of a new generation of consumers' understanding of cars and design.
Front and rear feet into the power circuit, Ning Wang, Geely who is stronger