BMW: Driven by Design

By: Bill BreenWed Dec 19, 2007 at 12:36 AM

Chris Bangle and his design gurus are the creative engine inside the hottest car company in the world. But BMW's most breathtaking design may well be its strategy for growth. At the height of its success, when many of its rivals are hunkering down, BMW is making risky bets and unveiling a collection of bold new models. Who says you shouldn't mess with success?

As the model begins to take shape, the designers stand back and cast a critical eye on the process. To fine-tune a car's large, gestural surfaces, the designers communicate in a vernacular that they've dubbed "Banglish": a combination of German, English, Italian, onomatopoeia, and ultrademonstrative hand gestures. They spend hours debating whether there's enough "scccmt" in the lines -- that is, whether the lines need to accelerate more. Bangle is particularly concerned with the "visual energy" and tension in a car's surfaces, and he will use a series of plucked-string sounds ("ding-di-ding, ding ding") that rise in pitch to imply changes of tension in a line. "There's no single language that can express what we're trying to do," says Boyke Boyer, who is unquestionably the king of onomatopoeia. "So we make up our own language."

Bangle puts it another way: "The definition that semanticists use for 'design' is meaning. Where there is meaning, there is design."

Bill Breen (bbreen@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior editor.