April 4, 2020 Martin Aubé, industrial designer - The Creative unit inc. - Industriel design
And if the major automobile manufacturers launched into the design and manufacturing of personal protective equipment (PPE) ?
On April 20, after reading that Ford and GE Healthcare would produce 50,000 ventilators in 100 days, I tried to imagine what a N95 masks designed and produced by auto manufacturers might look like. This is without a doubt, a side effect of confinement on the creativity of an industrial designer’s mind.
This styling exercise is an anticipation of a near future where the major automobile manufacturers could design and produce their own lines of personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect the medical profession and citizens from the multiple and recurrent waves of pandemic type COVID-19. These high quality masks that can be easily disinfected and worn hundreds of times, therefore recyclable by the user, will henceforth be an essential investment for each individual. Each company will therefore offer masks and protection systems according to formal characteristics specific to their brand image as well as to their particular protection system technologies. Like any technological object manufactured by human engineering, a global supply need and an increasingly strong demand, would maintain reasonable purchase cost by a competitive market, since these products would henceforth be included in the consumer goods market segment, like cleaning and hygiene products.
This exercise illustrates the AUDI, VOLKSWAGEN, PORSCHE, MERCEDES BENZ, CHEVROLET and FORD versions.
For each brand, expert industrial designer Martin Aubé from L’Unité Créative inc. analyzed the DNA and intrinsic values that characterize these Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to apply them to new concepts of personal protective equipment (PPE).
Martin Aubé, worked 18 years at BRP and 16 years as a consultant in transportation design for several companies in Quebec, he specialized, among other things, in brand image analysis. Remarkable: normally we manage to give a distinctive character to an automobile or a vehicle by treating its front face with certain peculiarities of a human face.
The exercise of reversing the process becomes formally very interesting when we use the distinctive features of an automobile brand to apply it to a device for protecting the human face without making it a caricature, by projecting a reassuring image of high technology.
One element which seems to have a promising future for the protection system in hospitals and for the living environments of the elderly is the fact that all the different functions: "protective mask, protective glasses and cap" would be designed and produced in a unique set, comprising an assembly of various resistant and soft materials for the face and the head, limiting the skin marks and the number of steps and movement required when dressing, which would reduce the risks of contamination during installation and withdrawal of the product.
These concepts are preliminary and are intended solely as a styling study and for communicating new ideas. In subsequent steps, an analysis of comfort (HF&E - Ergonomics) and functions could be carried out.
Copyright except for the illustrated automobile brands - Martin Aubé L’Unité Créative inc. 2020 Attribution - No commercial use - No modification or interpretation.
