Dramatic design

Shubhabrata ‘Shumi’ Marmar reflecting on the dramatic design of Mahindra BE6.

What you should know about dramatic designs is there is always been a long-standing debate about whether they’re good for a company to do or not.

Dramatic designs can draw attention; they can create aspiration, but they can also age very quickly, which is why a lot of companies are a little leery of doing super out-there designs for production cars.

You do that for concepts because the concept is about attention and not production.

Therefore, if you look at, for example, the Polo—the Polo didn’t age a lot, but the Polo didn’t also look super fresh when it arrived. It looked like a nice, clean, fresh design, and it looked like that for a long time because it wasn’t a super dramatic design.

Whereas every time Lamborghini, for example, to go right to the other end of this, when they have to build a new supercar, they have to really push a dramatic design out because it is a supercar.

It’s not going to get produced in large numbers, but it’s that drama that is part of that brand’s design story.

But when you take it to production, which will sell a large number of cars, the risk is if it’s too dramatic, then in two years it’ll look like the last trend rather than today’s fresh car.

That’s why dramatic designs—it’s a trick; it’s a good trick, but it may not always work.