The "Mozart Effect" is a term used by Alfred Tomatis for his belief listening to Mozart's melodies can make you smarter. Ford's designers apparently took this approach, with a modern twist, while designing the 2010 Ford Taurus.
Art is music and music is art, and while both are subjective, there's no denying that either one or both combined can bring out the most creative juices you have to offer. Ford's lead designer of the 2010 Taurus explained to the Detroit News just how influential music can be during the design process, simultaneously inspiring and focusing the members of the design team.
By sharing music either via a studio installed radio or via iPod swapping, the designer's were able to get into a singular mindset of how the 2010 Taurus should appear. By doing so, the entire team was able to focus on the task at hand and also inspired them to use the musical rhythms to find new abstract shapes and forms that they would later massage into the final 2010 Taurus interior and exterior design.
According to the chief designer on the 2010 Ford Taurus team, Earl Lucas;
"When you've got good music, it's amazing how many shapes come out. You lose track of time. When we were working on this program, it was nothing to have our senior designer, Dean Carbus, sketching away with his music blaring; the next designer would say, 'Oh I don't have that track,' and he'd put it in his iPod. The studio has to be a creative environment like that, because we're sharing ideas all the time."
Lucas said that the playlist consisted of a set of tracks ranging from Paul Oakenfold's upbeat trance to the melancholy hip-hop vibe of Citizen Cope. The sophisticated diversity of the music they selected during the design development proved to be absolutely beneficial to the Taurus program, giving it a modern and technical, yet classic design proportion and completely distinguishing it from the previous two Taurus generations. [via Detroit News]