‘Robust’, ‘aerodynamic’, ‘safe to drive’, ‘comfortable to live in’ – and preferably also ‘attractive to look at’. The design demands on today’s modern trucks are among the toughest in the world of product design. So what does it take to meet all these demands? Asok George and Rikard Orell at the Volvo Design Center have the answer.
Tool, status object, vehicle, means of transport, mobile accommodation – a truck has a thousand faces. You get different perspectives depending on the person to whom you are speaking.
A driver hauling a full load up a steep Alpine gradient appreciates its power, size and spacious interior. A regional planner with responsibility for environmental issues would doubtless prefer to see more modest and more aerodynamic trucks than those currently on the roads.
A child who is about to cross a busy road would perhaps prefer that there were no trucks at all.
“When we pen a new design, we consider two different types of end-users. First of all we have the customer, who usually knows exactly what he wants. To attract him to our brand, the design must express certain values and qualities. The other end-user of our products is society in general. The trucks we design operate everywhere,” says Asok George, Chief Designer at the Volvo Design Center. “If people don’t like them because they look frightening or ugly, they simply won’t function in society, which means we will have failed,”
At his workplace just outside Gothenburg in Sweden, a dozen or so designers from all over the world work on the creation of what in truck circles are some of the most dynamic products in the world: Volvo’s fleet of heavy trucks.
