Nissan's senior manager color and design strategy Francois Farion on the importance of objects in keeping focus [w/Video]

Nissan's Francois Farion, senior manager, color and design strategy, features in a new video giving an insight into how important objects are to designers when communicating, defining and maintaining their design intentions. A lot of time and energy goes into designing a car and so, Farion says, it's vital that designers keep their focus throughout the process. He believes objects are the key to creating coherent designs.

CDN-GM Interactive Competition launched

The Car Design News - GM Interactive Competition interior design phase has launched and is now accepting uploads from students studying any kind of design course in North America and Canada. You can register and upload an initial entry right now at www.cardesigncontest.com GM's four brands: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC have each set a brief, of which students can choose to answer one or several. It's traditional to focus your design efforts towards the close of a design competition, but GM, and our sponsors, Dassault Systèmes and Faurecia, have mentors standing by to guide your design work, so we encourage you to begin uploading work as soon as you can.

Bio-Fuel Skycar to go in to production

Parajet's Skycar looks set for road-legal production in 2010 [ad#ad-1] Three months ago we brought you news on the plans of London Company Parajet International Ltd to take their Skycar on a trip to Timbuktu. Well, not only was the trip a great success – they arrived in Timbutu on 26th March – but the Skycar is now destined to go in to production next year. Bedfordshire Company Rage Motorsport, best known for producing Buggies, is to partner with Parajet to produce completely road-legal versions of the Skycar, with Rage producing the cars/buggies and Parajet adding the bits to make it fly (which makes sense!).