Family design

        I got interested in a new and controversial topic, which is called "Family design", when I looked for cars I liked these days. The family design is a new design concept. According to what I know, the original family design concept had appeared in 1960s. It wasn't the real family design. Just like the Alfa Romeo's cars at that time, all of them have the same shield grille in their former faces, and all the Aston Martin's cars have the same inverted trapezoid grille. So the original family design is actually just some products from an automobile company share only one or two same shaped parts.
        About 40 years later, the real family design came into being in the 21th century. I think this tendency was leaded by the Volkswagen. Walter de Silva, who was the young design director of the Seat of the Volkswagen Company, designed a coupe called tango in 2001. Tango had double waistlines, big mouth shield grille, and hollowed-out steering wheel. That was the beginning of modern family design. During the next four to five years, all the Seat cars had the double waistlines, big mouth shield grille, and hollowed-out steering wheel design, and all of them had the same shaped headlights. They all looked the same. Then Walter de Silva became the design director of the Volkswagen and Audi. He created the Golf 5 and Audi A5, then all the Volkswagen cars had almost the same face with Golf 5, all the Audi cars had the same face with Audi A5. He was the designer who made family design became popular all over the world.
        The modern family design made the cars from one brand looked so similar. Some people and media laugh at that and said "The most happiness job in the world is the designer of Volkswagen, he only need to go to work one day every five years. Then he just need to enlarge and shrink the car to different sizes to finish the designs of all products." I think the family design is a big tendency in today's world, almost all TOP 20 automobile companies are using family design. This tendency is irreversible. Because of its many advantages. It can save money for the car companies. For examples, many car company used to have a thousand people's design team, after using family design, they don't need that many people anymore. Family design can also shows a company's culture. Like all the BMW cars have the angel eyes design, showing that the car is powerful and comfortable.
       To draw a conclusion, I believe the family design will be more and more popular. On the other hand, designer or design teams need to show some of their work in each car, so that the car can be more beautiful and easier for customers to accept.