This assignment was a bit tough for me, because I could think of a million and one things that didn't function properly, but I couldn't think of anything that stood out to me for bad design. I kept thinking and pondering and trying to reminisce of thoughts I had about something that I thought just looked awful. I finally remember a design that drove me crazy, mustangs.
A mustang identity to me is a car that is powerful, robust, sexy and confident. When mustang comes to mind the comes to mind I image something around 1967 to about 1970.
Looking back into the history and evolution of a mustang I found that the evolution is very drastic and they seem to have had a lot more down than ups (in my opinion) to the design of the mustang. However, the mustang I want to focus on for bad design is about the era starting at 1994 to 2004. In high school there was a black 2000 mustang in the parking lot. I hated it. Part of me could be biased because the girl who drove it hated me, but there was also another black mustang within that era and I thought they were both just ugly. The design to me is nothing what a mustang should be.
The first Gestalt principle I want to address is the loss in the law of pragnanz and the simplicity in shapes. First the window is framed with all curves, loses those sharp angles. The shape seems to attempt a half circle, but it is lopsided, instead of the distinct figures with a triangle, square, triangle. You can see a similar thing happening in the grill with a half circle again that barely makes up a grill in comparison to the dominant, big bold rectangle on the 1967. The light fixtures as well, where the 2000 takes the shape within a shape and just picks the rectangle instead of keeping that contrast with a circle instead a rectangular frame.
The biggest impact where the 2000 mustang lost its design is the law of continuity with line. The 1967 protrudes with lines and leads the eye down the body. For me it starts at the hood of the car and drags it along the windshield, across the side window and down along the hip. Or I look at the grill to the line that leads my eye around the light fixture, jump to the line on the side of the body all the way down site seeing the tires and whole side of the body, up and around the hip to the back.
But the 2000 lacks that continuity with either the lines being diminished or completely erased in the model altogether. This gives you eye no where to go, it doesn't lead or drag you eye to any place. IThe designers seemed to have taken the cheek of the older models, slapped a tail on the end of it and called it a mustang.
The 2000 design and the lacks thereof doesn't make the car a "looker" and the every word mustang has a demand connotation that you must look or cannot help the desire to look. This highlights my point that the 2000 model loses in the domain of design of identity and what it means to be a mustang.
No comments:
Post a Comment