Designing a car is a study in trade-offs. Manufacturers have to balance performance with economy, comfort with technology, cost with quality. Driver input versus computer control. All of these endless compromises are constantly being checked against strategies, budgets and timelines. And even when a company gets all the balances right, the resulting car can fall flat. The blueprint, as they say, isn’t the product. Which …
by Ryan McManus This Memorial Day Weekend marks the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500, the crown jewel of American motorsport. Despite expecting to draw crowds north of 350,000 on race day, IndyCar remains on the periphery of the average American’s motorsport awareness, eclipsed by NASCAR and the Sprint Cup. I went down to Speedway, Indiana ahead of the 500 to talk with Schmidt Peterson …
Influential American artist and designer Paula Scher kicked off this year’s Design Indaba with a talk she titled “Small Breakthroughs, and How They Came to Be.” During her presentation, she detailed both the struggles and solutions involved in several of her most famous projects, from the graphic identity of NYC’s Public Theater to the new Windows logo. We caught up with Scher afterward to talk …
