Chris Bangle and the Lateral Thinking of Car Design
Original, at times controversial and unapologetically unconventional, Chris Bangle is just the right person to talk about car design in a direct and sharp tone—laying out, with the right touch of irony and clear awareness, everything many people think but few dare to say.
His book, Reading Between the Lines of Car Design, is a recommended read for anyone who’s a passionate observer of automotive styling. It delivers exactly what the title promises, in an engaging and relaxed tone: over the course of roughly 240 pages, it offers not only an overview of the different phases in design history but also a sharp look at clichés and trends, interspersed with personal anecdotes and chapters dedicated to both iconic figures and lesser-known names—each presented with remarkable clarity and insight in just a few well-chosen words.
And that’s perhaps the book’s greatest strength: each of the 102 topics is explored over just two pages, accompanied by lively, hand-drawn sketches by the author himself that enhance the informal tone of a work refreshingly free of rhetoric.
Every section—including the short foreword by John Bell, which ironically ends up being the longest passage in the entire book—is like a snapshot, a concise and essential take, stripped of all unnecessary weight. What we’re holding, most likely, is a compact encyclopedia of lateral thinking applied to design, rounded off with a brief yet valuable bibliography in which the author recommends key readings for young designers entering such a fascinating world and profession.
Often described as “the most influential designer of his generation,” Chris Bangle may well have found, in this book, his ultimate statement as a free thinker with a pencil in hand.
Datasheet
Leggere tra le righe del car design
Publisher: Minerva
Author: Chris Bangle
Size: bound volume measuring 15 x 23 x 1,5 cm with hard cover
Pages: 240
Text: Italian
Photographs: many, in b/w
Price: 25 euros
