Fiat 500 4 door

Posted on by Medina Davide

I know, I know, do we really need a 4-door Fiat 500? Maybe not, but the romanticism of the 2-door model has the inconvenient shortcoming of not being practical. You may argue that Fiat already features the 600 with four doors, but that’s different model: it’s way bigger and more expensive. Four doors on the tiny 500 would make life easier when going for groceries, shopping or taking kids to school. Clearly, fifteen additional centimeters to the original length are needed to fit two more doors and real people in the backseat, as we all know human beings can’t be folded and stored in the back like empty bags. Actually they can but it’s not recommended, that’s why cars have ‘Emergency Trunk Releases’. The truth is the population is getting taller and fatter, microcars are still cute but not anymore as practical as they used to be in the 70s or the 80s. The list of manufacturers quitting 2-door versions of their cars is increasing every year, not even Volkswagen bets anymore on a 2-door Golf GTI. The challenge is to balance the cuteness of the original model with the needs of nowadays drivers. Not easy, I know, especially on a Monday morning like this.

Milan. In every sense.

Posted on by Medina Davide

The Alfa Romeo Milano

If you’re a car guy or just simply lived through the 80s you might had seen this rare car. The Alfa Romeo Milano (75 for the European market) was an Italian sport sedan and the Brainchild of Ermanno Cressoni. Cressoni (1939 – 2005) has been a prominent designer born and raised in Milan and worked many years for the Milanese brand. On top of that he’s been a professor with the Polytechnic University of.. well.. Milan, my alma mater, the University where I graduated in 2002. I attended his classes and learned a lot about styling and design from him, I learned the ‘responsibility of beauty’ which means as a designer not only I have to focus on functionality of products but I have to consider the importance of pleasuring the eyes.

A new adventure in art

Posted on by Medina Davide

I am relatively new to drawing characters, cartoons and portraits. I did product design my entire life therefore I still find somehow difficult to approach faces. Not only there are proportions to respect but expressions are important as well. What makes a character interesting is the feeling conveyed: anger, happiness, sadness and how good is the artist in doing it. I have to admit I am still a rookie trying to learn as much as possible from others, nonetheless I’m getting truly involved into it. Drawing something animated is a complete new adventure for professionals like me used to create lifeless things. Yes, an object can move too, like a car or a plane, but the difference doesn’t reside in motion. The difference between things and people is that with people there’s always a story behind them, a story recounted by the expression on their faces. Try to sketch quickly a face on a piece of paper, do it now; you’ll immediately notice that there’s no way to make it devoid of emotions. No matter how bad your drawing can be (like mine) you will always stamp an expression on it and a general feeling to the character. That is his/her personal story and it’s what’s lacking in objects.

Applying white chalk on Pantone for a mixed effect. Remember, don’t do viceversa (Pantone on chalk) or the tip is gone for good.
#drawing #sketching #art #design #inking

Memorial Day 2022

Posted on by Medina Davide

No design discussion today, there’s a more important matter: Memorial Day. Independently from what you’re into, put it on pause and take a minute to remember the fallen of every war. I made the following short video to say thanks to all the troops who fought and freed Europe in the 40s. If it wasn’t for those men who made the ultimate sacrifice and eventually succeeded, I wouldn’t be here writing on social media in a free country; I wouldn’t probably be in this world at all. So yes, I have no interest in art and design today, let me just focus on how truly lucky and blessed I am to be born after the brave generation who landed on Omaha Beach and Anzio and gave me the possibility to pursue my dreams. They perished so we could enjoy freedom. Respect.

Do not stand by my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep
I am the thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints in snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain.
As you awake with morning’s hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.
Do not stand by my grave and cry
I am not there, I did not die.

Let creativity loose

Posted on by Medina Davide

This drawing is at least 10 years old, it was my first time trying to make a trench (or something vaguely similar) so I thought “let’s make something unseen, something eye-catching”. When approaching a new task, or should we say challenge, we designers have to go big, to think outside the box. Trying to make something as commercial as possible would be the worst error: we’re not marketing guys, we are the ones breaking the rules, we are the professionals leaving other professionals jaw dropped. We are entitled to raise perplexity and confusion in viewers’ minds, it’s a designer’s duty to deliver something unexpected and unestablishing, close to a punch out of the blue. So this is my idea for a trench, as weird as I could conceive it.

Be Curious, Try Things.

Posted on by Medina Davide

In the past few days I indulged in Bernie Sanders’ mittens pictures (in my defense they are everywhere) and while shopping online for motorcycle parts, Google promptly showed me handlebar muffs ads. I suppose the algorithm works like this: mittens + motorcycles accessories = handlebar muffs. Once again Google is smarter than me and knows I can resist everything except temptation, as a result I bought a pair just out of curiosity. To be clear, I haven’t been brainwashed into this, there must be some sort of purpose in products that trigger my interest -and credit card- and it has to be related to my business or passions, this to explain why I’ll never buy a Tamagotchi. No offense meant, it’s just that I grew up so utterly pragmatic that I’m closer to screwdrivers (or mittens) rather than electronic eggs that cannot be scrambled.

As a designer I had doubts concerning muffs, I thought these voluminous things attached to a motorcycle weren’t exactly a flawless project. My questions were: is it possible to ride a motorcycle at highway speed during mild winter while keeping hands warm? Is it difficult to handle a heavy tourer bike with hands hidden in those dark holes? The not so obvious answers are yes to the first and no to the second.

Now, I know when someone from Anchorage meets someone from Tampa there could be misunderstanding about what winter means, let’s say so far I tested them riding at 40-45°F and they worked fine, it is very unlikely that I will test them during a snowstorm in Siberia but you can try them on a snowmobile and share your thoughts.

Before switching on the beast, find the right settings for your riding position until you feel comfortable, safe and not clumsy in traffic, there is some work to be done in the garage at the beginning. It took some time to me because at first I felt my forearms were forced in a non ergonomic Playmobil-people-like posture, but once I tuned them finely I discovered the great pleasure of a Mediterranean winter ride with warm fingers and when I say ‘warm’ I don’t mean bearable temperature, I mean good-peripheral-circulation warm.

Few last considerations at this point:

1. Decent quality gloves are always mandatory for bikers no matter the season: up with safety, down with arthritis.

2. Renowned brands products are to be preferred to super cheap ones (duh!). Handlebar muffs must be thick and structured, we don’t want two sad bags flapping and wrapping dangerously around brake/clutch levers. Probably urban commuters can take the risk settling with discount items to save a couple of bucks but I wouldn’t recommend it to those who frequently cover long distances at high speed: nobody wants a piece of your bike landing on his windshield. 

3. Muffs are not 100% windproof and definitely not waterproof (no one’s perfect) so when you’re ready to click ‘purchase’ make some room for compromise, I’m sure that if you’re 40 something like me you already know a lot about compromising in life.

4. Exercising regularly helps a lot the cardiovascular system so if your fingers easily look like frozen sardines get off the couch and workout before blaming muffs.

The Obscure Nature of Electric Vehicles

Posted on by Medina Davide

Hypothetical Electric Vehicle

Every time a new technology makes its way to the market consumers are obviously ignorant about it and they normally go: ‘For the same price, the bigger and more powerful the better’. Speaking of EVs, common people like me are usually concerned about the range. When an electric vehicle is tested its range is normally exposed in the very first lines of the article if not in the subtitle. It makes sense after all, how far we can go is the key factor, the most critical factor to be considered when it comes to such cars (apart from price of course). This because it triggers our fear to be stranded on the road side miles away from home like sailors lost at sea and it’s perfectly understandable, people who owned a 2 stroke motorcycle with a fuel tank size inversely proportional to its gigantic appetite for gas know what I am talking about, boy you could skip leg day after pushing that thing to the closest station. Most customers want to know how many miles they can run without recharging which is correct but keep in mind that efficiency is important as well: both battery efficiency and powertrain efficiency. Big batteries add pounds, which leads to bigger brakes, frames, suspensions and tires. Big batteries store more energy but part of it is dissipated just because of their weight so the industry tackles the range problem both with more capacity and improving efficiency. Have you noticed that when comparing ICE vehicles we check MPGs while when it comes to EVs we mostly want to know the range? It’s like we are worried about gas price when filling but recharging is free. Let’s put it this way: a Hummer sure has a bigger tank than a Corolla but this doesn’t mean it goes farther or it’s cheaper to run. The same goes for EVs, big batteries-great range doesn’t means miles are free: How many miles per kW the car delivers matters, engineers and insiders know this very well, now it’s time to educate common people like the one writing that range and consumption are both important, before we all end up complaining about electricity bills. Wasting energy comes with a price in terms of pollution too as long as sources are not renewable. But even when it’s renewable energy, why would we waste it anyway?
Countless videos on YouTube showed for years Toyota Prius real consumption (it was a sort of challenge) but now that society is facing this huge shift in technology to EVs it seems consumption is not that relevant anymore to the average consumer, we have to avoid the approach ‘Just throw some more Duracells in the trunk cowboy’ because it is not cost effective.
Makers say that to extend range and cut costs every little enhancement helps, downsizing and lighter components do their part in the process. I suppose leaving home the 150 pounds of your mother-in-law seems a reasonable price to pay for the sake of economizing.