Soundbites: Designers from Different Worlds Collaborated at Ford Motor Co.

Ford Motor Company recently hosted a forum for journalists from all over the country to hear from like-minded people who are designers from four different walks of life. Fashion designer, Christian Siriano, Architect and Artist Adam Kalkin, Director of The Insight and Exploration Group in research and development at Herman Miller Gretchen Gscheidle, Vice president of Design J Mays and Ari Goldberg, Founder and CEO of Stylecast.com, who summed it up best when he said we live in a mixed culture, which is recognized by the Ford Motor Company.

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Cut #1:	“This idea of convergence is really interesting to me. I grew up in the sports world, the entertainment world, the music world, all of those things are feeding off one another and I think that Ford has just done an unbelievable job at really being at the forefront of not trying to push their agenda, but rather listen to what people are doing, move with the trends and create products that people love.” :21 sec.
	Goldberg went on to say it’s the responsibility of these designers from different walks of life to recognize the need to not only manufacture mass appeal or mainstream consumer appreciation, but also create and design objects that are recyclable, with the ultimate goal of balancing form and functionality.
Cut #2:	“As the world becomes an even more complex place, as resources become even more scarce, we as a society need to be looking at that, but at the same time we don’t want to be sacrificing aesthetics, utility or things that we simply enjoy. It’s a great design challenge of our age, is limited resources the struggles we have throughout the world, and creating products that are affordable and exciting and cool but reusable, recyclable and I think these guys are just doing so many interesting things at that and I think we’re going to see more of that.” :32 sec.
	Goldberg looked into the future and talked about the trends that will lead to collaborations as the years unfold and more companies converge.
Cut #3:	“I think you’re going to see a lot of industries starting to borrow from one another, I think you’re going to see a lot of collaborations, I think that’s the key word, collaborations. We’ll see collaboration among talent and designers, we’ll see collaborations among brand and other brands and we’ll also see collaboration between brands and consumers and I think that is already proliferating throughout the internet that we’ll see a lot more of in the future.” :22 sec.
	Go Further with Ford was highlighted by these open panel discussions that examined the idea of accessible designs from different perspectives, be it architecture, product design, fashion or the automotive industry itself.