So Kobayashi is the king of martial arts, doesn't make him a good designer.
Here's a lady with creativity and a spirit of generosity!!! Truly a woman with vision, finally......
GOOD DESIGN SHOULD ATTRACT BOTH MEN AND WOMEN SAYS WOMAN CAR DESIGNER
MONTREAL --
A special exhibit at the Montreal Auto Show called Design With A Feminine Touch may produce some worthwhile ideas for women car buyers, but Diane Allen believes it should attract men as well as women.
"To assume that women want something more feminine in car design is a big mistake," says Allen, chief designer at Nissan Design International (NDI) in San Diego, Cal.
Allen, who has been at NDI since graduating 12 years ago from Detroit's Centre for Creative Studies, includes in her credits the Nissan Quest mini-van and the new Altima, which will be unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show in January.
She is currently leading a team that is redesigning a Nissan model, she won't say which one, whose buyers are 63 percent women, but she says that fact won't influence the new design.
"We don't take the position that we are appealing either to men or to women," says Allen. "Good design is not gender related."
The Montreal exhibit will feature 18 design ideas that will be illustrated by Montreal industrial design students. The ideas were submitted for a contest run by a popular radio station. It received 550 responses when it asked female listeners what they would like to see in their next vehicle.
Allen says women want the same things in a vehicle that men want.
Like men, she says, their first consideration is how the car looks, then by how it drives. They have to consider price, of course, and then they often make a choice on the basis of what they have read about the vehicle in magazines like Consumer Report.
Allen says she is constantly fighting against female cliches, such as the one that says buttons and dials should be designed differently because women have long fingernails.
"Good ergonomic design works for everyone," she says. "It should be just as easy to operate with long nails as it is for men with big hands."
She is also quick to dispel the notion that she is at NDI to "bring a feminine touch" to car design. In fact, she is in charge of the exterior design studio.
Allen, who attends focus groups to talk to car buyers, says younger women especially are as intrigued as men are by features that are machine-like.
"They're not just looking at the outside; they look at how a car works. They are looking for a working product that suits their lifestyle."
It's also a cliche to suggest that women are more interested in style than performance.
In fact, she says, performance has become a safety issue. Women want cars that handle well enough to maneuvre out of dangerous situations, and they want power to be able to merge safely with freeway traffic and reduce the time it takes to pass on two-lane roads.
She says vehicles designed at NDI are influenced much more by the fact that they compete in the global marketplace than by the gender question.
"Our vehicles are sold in North America as well as places like Thailand and Japan," she says. "They have to satisfy the market demands of many different countries."
Allen's current project started with sketches and quarter-scale clay models of 13 different designs, each painted and finished complete with details like tires and wheels, glass and outside mirrors.
From these, six are chosen for further development, and the choice is further narrowed down to four designs that are presented to a representative group of buyers, who judge them on styling, function and the overall concept.
Then three designs that survive this process are then rendered in full-size clay models from which will emerge the final design.
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