Face on the Egg

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Face on the Egg

November 7, 2008. By Peter Lloyd

In "Life Is a Highway: Study Confirms Cars Have Personality," Innovations Report summarizes research that concludes, "many people see human facial features in the front end of automobiles."

According to an earlier story in Business Week, car designer Doug Wilson came up with the organizing principle behind the old Nissan J30 Infiniti by doodling an egg and scribbling an arc through it.

The problem was that when he presented the design to his Japanese clients, they loved the egg, but they hated the face.

face-like car dashboard

The Japanese, the article says, see the headlights as eyes, the grill as mouth. (Jeez, I must be Japanese!) To them, the front of the car is its face. And in this case, client and designer had a rough way to go over the facial expression of the yet-to-be-realized Infiniti.

So if Doug had just paid more attention to what his clients expected, he would have saved himself a lot of grief. And probably lost the assignment.

Had he started to design from the face, he might not have doodled the egg that gave him the organizing principle behind what turned out to be the winning design.

Instead, like a typical American, he started from the profile. And that's why he has done so well. At the time of the article, Doug was constantly competing with Nissan's Tokyo designers, and his designs won as often as they did because he brought a fresh perspective.

If you supply ideas, make sure they come from you and not your client's expectations. Clients want big ideas. They make nitpick them to death and they may not always buy them, but if you don't give it to them fresh, you always lose.

If you're buying someone's ideas, look first for the big idea. Build on it. The details can always be worked out later.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest business problems.

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