A Car Styling-based Study: The Design Methodology Based On Brand DNA

The history of the car styling is nearly a hundred years which is the developmentof the advanced technology combined with up-to-date style. Today, car is more thanjust physical technology artifact. It should be the presentation of value and the historyof the car brand and in turn the brand makes the car styling design meaningful. Basedon this point of view, all car styling design activities should be the scientificconstrained creation works full of culture heritages.The title of this Ph.D thesis is a car styling-based study: the design methodologybased on brand DNA. Firstly, this research belongs to the design research which is aunique interdisciplinary study between the branch of nature science and humanities.So the core research though on this thesis is not only from a theoretical interpretationbut also from the Chinese traditional thinking on the distinction and categories of theartifacts.Secondly, the core research questions are what brand DNA is, how to representand how to build a car brand using it. So we turn to the history of the car brand anddecomposed these questions into several small research parts such as in which waythe brand DNA turns into the brand image and develops a brand concept, etc.Thirdly, the basic research methods in this thesis are case study and literaturereview. We use surveys, feature lines comparisons, features’ relationship, andformalized presentation which are shown in the visualization figures. All the dataused in this thesis is from field study including photos, books and correspondingpapers.At last, this thesis is an attempt that talking about the ways of car styling designfrom brand at the point of the natural mechanism which is the evolutional thoughtsmade up by brand DNA’s hereditary and mutation.As this thesis is about the designerly ways of knowing, we cares more about thecase’s reliability and reusability. There are two kinds of cases in this thesis that isclassic foreign brand cases and domestic brand cases. The former ar e the brandhistory cases and the later are the brand design cases.The classic foreign brand cases are the surveys of BMW museum in Munich andAudi museum in Ingolstadt where the precious history photos and documents got from.They show that the procedure how a car brand build have its owned unique life circle and brings the idea that the brand is a growing life creature which has brand DNA topresent its characters. So we proposed two operators, the “feature code” and“semantic code”, which are the characters could self-produce and the brand wouldevolve from, for the sub-structure of brand DNA. The feature code stands for thegeometry attribute of the brand DNA by the feature lines indicating the brand patterncognition while the semantic code for the semantic concept attribute by the adjectivesindicating the brand value cognition. Besides we assume that the codes are in the formof string as the brand history is a lasting development. Based on this hypothesis, thebranding process is the feature code and the semantic code move in endless cycles tobuild the brand context called “the brand story” and the brand cognition is more like astorytelling process.The domestic brand cases are the surveys about the design process of Zhongqi CarDesign Program and Zhongqi Commercial Vehicle Design Program. In these twoprograms, we studied how the brand DNA affect the design proposal where we foundthat the product family and the brand stability could be explained trough the heredityof brand DNA while the brand’s innovation and the brand vitality could be the resultof the mutation of brand DNA. Analogy with the BMW brand case, we find there aretwo ways to build the product family which are the same platform features’ inheritingcalled “the immediate family” and the cross platform features’ inheriting called“closely related”. Meanwhile, analogy with the Audi brand case, we conclude thereasons for the brand’s innovation are the technology creations and art improvements.Then we find that the connection founding between the semantic codes wouldstimulate the creative design and the mapping between the semantic codes and featurecodes would make the design more meaningful and more acceptable. The researchresult shows that the expression of the brand DNA mutation is a dynamic state whichmeans the brand cognition is a dynamic recognition system instead of a sum of thesymbol during a time period and the consequence of brand DNA mutation is theadaptive state which implies that the brand feature code and semantic code w ouldsense the change of the technology and art environment and adapt it. Thanks to themutation, the brand platform is more advanced and more diversify.Based on the research on the car brand DNA’s presentation,heredity and mutation,we propose a spiral brand development model due to the brand DNA’s reinforcementfrom the lower state to the higher state which is like a spiral evolution process. Fromthe model, we define two kinds of brand design phenomenon which are described asthe creative flyback design phenomenon and the creative leap design phenomenon. The first one is like a direct or an inter-generation conversation between the designand the brand history which we called it the inheriting design strategy. The latter oneis like design talking with the current time called as the leap design strategy.Furthermore, this thesis summarizes four types of methods in the inheriting designstrategy which are the in-line type inheriting method, the stack type inheriting method,the semantic clue building method, the feature aggregation method and four types ofmethods in the leap design strategy which are the dynamic design method, theadaptive design method, the divergence design method, the convergence designmethod. In the end, this thesis proposed a car brand evolutional strategy structure andcorresponding methodology that the right or the purpose of car styling design is thebranding and the way to achieve it is the brand DNA evolution.