Students from the ArtCenter College of Design of Southern California, with the support of the Lincoln Design Department led by Kemal Curic, imagined a project with a singular theme: telling a meaningful story. The challenge was given to four teams of film students, entertainment designers, illustrators and animators. The virtual mission was to imagine not only Lincoln vehicles of 2040 and beyond, but the world in which those vehicles would live and also the lives of the people who would drive them.
Each of the four projects included the development of a short film. In more traditional times, these films would have been presented to Ford and Lincoln executives in person, but the restrictions of the pandemic forced a change in those plans as well. Ford and Lincoln students, instructors and executives, such as Jim Farley, Joy Falotico, Hau Thai-Tang, Moray Callum, Michael Sprague and Curic, gathered on a Zoom call for an elaborate virtual storytelling session. “The storyboarding is just wonderful,” said Curic. “They brought the products to life. Watching them on screen, quite frankly, gave me goosebumps.”
To ensure the teams stayed true to Lincoln’s broader vision, each vehicle had to conform to the company’s CASE acronym: connected, autonomous, shared and electric. Here is the film illustrating the four projects: “Now You Drive”, “Anniversary”, “Amongst the Stars” and “Ensemble”.
