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Specialty

Transportation design

Designs vehicles and mobility products (cars, buses, trains, motorcycles, bicycles): their exterior form, their interior and how space is shared between people, cargo and mechanics.

In Spanish
Diseño de transporte
Origin
Usually traced to 1920s styling; General Motors' Art and Colour Section (1927)

What problem it addresses

A vehicle surrounds the body and moves. Its form has to make room for people, mechanics and safety, and also be recognizable.

Principles

  • Package first

    Before drawing the form, space is shared out between people, mechanics, cargo and visibility.

  • From the body

    The hip position of the seated occupant (the H-point) is the reference for placing seats, controls and sightlines.

  • Form and brand

    Proportions, silhouette and details make the vehicle recognizable and read as part of a family.

Applications in design

  • Use it like this

    Test the package at full scale: sit in, get in and out of the vehicle before settling the form.

  • Avoid

    Drawing an attractive silhouette that then leaves no room for people or mechanics.

  • Don’t fall for it

    Work with engineering from the start: aerodynamics, safety and manufacturing also shape the form.

Connections

Builds on

Related to

Authors and works

  1. 1927

    Harley Earl

    General Motors hired him that year to lead the Art and Colour Section, an in-house department devoted to the form and color of its cars.

  2. 1994

    David Gartman

    Wrote a social history of American automobile design that places the birth of styling in the 1920s.

  3. 2014

    Stuart Macey and Geoff Wardle

    Gathered the fundamentals of packaging in a handbook: how people and components are placed before giving form to cars and trucks.

  4. ArtCenter College of Design

    Its transportation design degree is divided into exteriors, interiors (including UI and UX) and alternative transportation: aircraft, marine, motorcycles, personal mobility and public transit.

Sources

Secondary sources

  • Lamm, M. (1998). The Earl of Detroit. American Heritage of Invention & Technology, 14(2). View source: Lamm, M. (1998)
  • Gartman, D. (1994). Auto opium: A social history of American automobile design. Routledge.
  • Macey, S., y Wardle, G. (2014). H-Point: The fundamentals of car design & packaging (2nd ed.). Design Studio Press.
  • ArtCenter College of Design (n.d.). Transportation Design: BS degree overview. Consultado el October 26, 2026. View source: ArtCenter College of Design (n.d.)

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