Corporate Identity Is Killing Design

Saw two things that struck me on my drive into the office today, a cliché and how corporate identity ruins true design flair.

First the cliché. In the words of Mark Lewyn’s character in the film Disclosure, how does a cliché become a cliché? Well that was ably demonstrated this morning by a fellow motorist. I’d say, mid forties, overweight, hair cut super short in an attempt to disguise the receding and greying hair line and those Oakley style wrap round shades with reflective burnt orange lens that look ridiculous on anyone over the age of about twenty five. Not only was the look a cliché, but so was the driving style. At each roundabout on the journey in to work I would see captain cliché wait until the vehicle approaching from the right (and thus whom had right of way) was almost on top of him before pulling out in front of them. Can you guess what car he was driving? Much as I liked my three series at the time, I always felt uncomfortable with the “BMW driver” stigma associated with its ownership. It’s a shame that the image of such a good product is tarnished by the actions of a few.

I saw my first phase three Ford Focus in the metal this morning. It was one of the cars that captain cliché cut up on my drive in this morning and I ended up following it for the last few miles into the office. What an awkward and yet surprisingly dull looking car. As with most new cars today it conforms to a standard brand design identity. Basically, the company start with the optimum design for the new corporate identify, such as the Golf, or the Fiesta or the Porsche 911 and then attempt to stretch or shrink that optimum design to fit all the other models in the range. Gone are the days when manufacturers would design each model in its own right. Now the entire range must conform to some homogenous corporate brand design.

Some things can handle being scaled whilst still maintaining their original design aesthetic. An iPad for example is just a scaled up iPod Touch and it looks just as sexy. A Porsche Cayenne and Panamera on the other hand are inflated / stretched versions of the 911 “optimum” design and they look bloody awful. But corporate management don’t care about all their different model ranges looking the best that they can be, just that no matter what model you see or buy, that it looks like every other model in the range, so that you know what company made it. I always thought that’s what the badge was for, but what do I know?

And so it is that Ford are the latest culprit to a release a product that is hamstrung by having to apply corporate design identity to a body shape and size for which the original optimal design, the Fiesta, was not intended. The Fiesta is a cracking looking car, almost certainly the best looking car Ford make at the moment (the other bizarrely being the S-Max). The proportions and the design details are spot on. No, it’s not the most spacious model in the range, but the compromise is well worth it when it looks that good. If all you care about is interior space, just forget any attempt at style and get a Toyota Yaris Verso. But with the Focus, Ford have managed to take what is the probably the best looking small car, stretch and inflate it and ended up with something that just looks plain and odd (or just plain odd). And what’s with all the chuffing creases and angles? You know what it reminds me of? a piece of paper that’s been scrunched up and then allowed to spring back to a crumpled shadow of its original pristine state.

I can just imagine the designer sitting at his desk sketching out a bigger version of the Fiesta, not liking what he had drawn, scrunching it up into a ball and chucking it in the corner. He then sat there forlornly looking at the scrunched up ball as it slowly unfurled and had a Eureka moment. That’s it! That’s the new Focus! Grabbing the scrunched up piece of paper he ran up to his bosses and presented them with the design for the all new Focus, The management were pleased because it looked like a big Fiesta so sported the corporate design identify and all those creases and angles made it look thrusting and exciting and not awkward and over designed at all. They then shipped the design down to the marketing people and instructed them to come up with some catchy sound bite name for all the creases and angles, because “scrunched up ball of paper” doesn’t quite have the ring to it that they were looking for. Something like “Dynamic Surfacing™” or “Flaming Blades™” would fit the bill.

When the original Focus came out it looked like nothing else on the road. More importantly, it looked like nothing else in Ford’s model line up. Sure some people took a while to warm to it, but everyone came round eventually. Look at the Chris Bangle Five series, that looked a complete mess, topped off by Dame Edna Everage’s glasses as headlights, but that went on to be the best selling Five series to date. Most importantly, the original Focus was the optimum model for the design (so long as you ignored the god awful looking saloon and estate variants). Sensibly, Ford didn’t try to apply the Focus design verbatim to the rest of its range so the original design excellence wasn’t diluted or sullied.

Just to compound the issue further, I stopped off at the local Asda to get my lunch and pulled up next to a black three door Fiesta Zetec. It looked superb and highlighted just how wrong the new Focus looks.

I’d like to hope that one of these days a car manufacturer will have the courage to design each model to look the best it can without compromising the design by forcing a standard corporate look, but I fear those days are long gone.