Speaking of benchmarking figures in the field of automotive design, Zhang Fan , deputy dean of the GAC Research Institute and director of the Concept and Styling Design Center, is one of them.
He used to be a senior designer of mass-produced cars in the Mercedes-Benz Design Center, and the "behind the scenes" of GAC Trumpchi's continuous sales miracles in the market. It is also a major breakthrough in the design of Chinese independent brands army head.
During the years of designing Trumpchi brand cars, he has personally written his own legendary stories because of the success of these cars.
plump wings
Zhang Fan likes to paint since he was a child, which planted a seed for his career.
After the college entrance examination, he first chose the Department of Industrial Design of Tongji University and became the first batch of Chinese students to receive automotive design education in industrial design. Then he studied for a master's degree in the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University and continued his advanced studies.
During his master's degree, he ushered in an important moment in his life.
In 2002, German "Auto-motorandsport" magazine organized a car design competition . The topic of the competition was to plan a brand that highlights the youth culture and design a series of cars for the brand.
As a top student of Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts, Zhang Fan happily participated in the competition and created a car brand that represents Chinese cultural characteristics-" EastScene ", hoping to show Eastern, especially Chinese culture through it.
Hard work has paid off, he won the " best brand design award " in this competition. More importantly, his performance attracted the attention of Mercedes-Benz Deputy Design Director Murat Günak as a judge.Murat threw an olive branch to him and invited him to work in the headquarters of Mercedes-Benz in Germany.
Like all young people chasing dreams, he gave up the stable job opportunity of staying in school to teach, resolutely went to the Mercedes-Benz R&D center full of opportunities and challenges in Germany, and started the first stop of his career.
When he first arrived at the world's top auto company, he was under great pressure in the face of Rulin's strong players. The first review revealed the gap between him and his colleagues. Unwilling to admit defeat, he rushed to catch up, immersed himself in research, and repeated deliberation. Others generally only made one or two plans for projects designed by others, but he did a dozen or so, and picked the best from them.
's hard work paid off once again. The that he participated in the design of the previous generation of Mercedes-Benz A-CLASS finally achieved mass production, allowing him to stand out from the fierce competition among many designers within Mercedes-Benz, and at the age of 29 he received Mercedes-Benz lifetime design The title of teacher .
This is rare in Mercedes-Benz. It is important to know that many car designers have not obtained the chance of mass production car design in their entire lives. The milestone significance of this event is that, from then on, a German brand with a century of car-making history began to imprint Chinese designers.
Zhang Fan has been focusing on this world-class car company for 8 years and has participated in the appearance design of many Mercedes-Benz projects. He has not only mastered the entire car design development process and advanced design techniques, but also accumulated a lot of practical experience. Constructed a more mature car design concept, which paved the way for his future career development.
Until 2009, he believed that the skills and experience he had accumulated and learned in Mercedes-Benz were almost the same. continued to stay, but was repeating himself, he was not reconciled to .
At that time, China quickly became the world's largest auto market. Chinese auto companies merged with overseas auto companies. The independent brands were eager for technological progress, eager to transform, and eager to have original car designs, but they did not know where to start.
Zhang Fan believes that an era of opportunities has come,The time has finally come to serve the motherland. Strong3strong has always been a desire in his heart to design a world-class car for a Chinese brand . After expressing his thoughts, he successively received offers from well-known car companies such as GAC, Citroen and GM, and chose GAC from them.
Why did you choose GAC? He said that the first is the earnest and practical spirit of GAC people and the patriotic sentiment of "making the Chinese people proud of its own brand", and the second is that he believes that GAC has accumulated many years of experience in cooperation with Japanese companies, and that it has strength to build well. The technology platform enables high-quality automotive design to be scientifically realized.
So Zhang Fan returned to China with his full ambition.
"Qi" wins
If German Benz has trained Zhang Fan's wings, then GAC has given him a broad blue sky to fly freely.
In July 2011, Zhang Fan joined GAC Research Institute and became the 27th employee of the Design Department. This year, after several years of hard work, GAC finally has a real independent brand- Trumpchi . In November of the same year, Zhang Fan changed his mind and became the design director of the Guangzhou Automobile Modeling Design Center.
Trumpchi GA3 has been developed before Zhang Fan joined, but the sales volume is average after listing. Zhang Fan believes that it lacks a sense of quality, so he modified it slightly and replaced it with a "Lingyunyi" design style, which gave Trumpchi GA3 a brand new look, which was loved by consumers and greatly increased its sales.
In order to take the lead in seizing the window period of the urban SUV market, in April 2015, Zhang Fan led the design team to launch the GAC Trumpchi GS4 . In the era of "face value", GS4 is a new international SUV with its urban styling. It has become a phenomenal product in the Chinese auto market from 2016 to 2017. It has been ranked among the Chinese brand in the compact SUV segment for two consecutive years. Top of the list.
According to consumer feedback, many people started to pay attention to the GAC Trumpchi brand because of the appearance of the vehicle. Chinese consumers are beginning to realize thatIt turns out that local brands can also design high-value and original cars.
Under the positioning of targeting the mid-to-high-end market, the positioning of GAC Trumpchi GS8 is to break the price ceiling to meet the higher requirements and experience of consumers. Based on the profound insight of Chinese consumers "pursuing value externally and pursuing comfort internally", Zhang Fan chose the design of "external rigidity and internal softness" for this independent flagship SUV GS8 of more than 150,000 yuan.
With its stunning design, GS8 became an instant hit after its launch. In 2017, the cumulative sales of Trumpchi GS8 were 102,214 units, which was regarded by authoritative media as "a powerful work for Chinese brands to replace joint venture brands". It is said that at that time, almost every car factory would buy the GS8 back for benchmarking analysis, dismantling, and anatomy of some design experience on this car.
It can be said that this large 7-seat SUV Trumpchi GS8 has allowed other leading Chinese auto brands to see the hope of entering the mid-to-high-end segment, and has established a high-level industry benchmark for China's independent vehicle design.
By virtue of design to bring the brand alive, Zhang Fan is called GAC Trumpchi's "savior" .
It is worth mentioning that, in addition to the endorsement of sales, with the efforts of his team, GAC Trumpchi’s products have formed a highly original and recognizable "Lingyunyi" design style, allowing GAC to take advantage of Like other local brands, the car has its own family design language . It has been passed on since 2014 and has been widely recognized by consumers.
boosting the "back wave"
Zhang Fan still remembers that when he first joined the GAC Research Institute, many people were car designers, but their knowledge, understanding and skills in car design were very shallow. At that time, he helped them to change the drawings, modify the sludge model, and show them to the car design sculpture and understand the shape and proportion of the car.
Over the past ten years, Zhang Fan has led a young team to practice and experience each project.The automotive styling design team has been divided into 16 professional sub-directions from more than 20 people at the beginning to more than 200 people now. The horizontal is the management function, and the vertical is the professional category. It has the ability to design the entire vehicle industry. It has become one of the largest automotive design teams in China.
Talking about the team building , Zhang Fan has a lot of emotion. A good team culture can undoubtedly escort the development of the organization. On how to create a cultural atmosphere for automotive designers, Zhang Fan believes that three points are very important. One is to clarify the function and value of the design, the other is to clarify that the design is a commercial project, and the third is Advocating an atmosphere of innovation, so that designers often have a sense of gain.
In Zhang Fan's view, gains a sense of is the top priority.
GAC has a good reputation in China and attracts many young designers. Although GAC has not bothered about recruitment, it has also lost some domestic first-class talents.
According to his memories, in the first year of new energy vehicles in 2015, more than a dozen car designers from GAC had flown into new forces to build cars. After reflection, he believes that the problem is that some designers will encounter work bottlenecks in the process of career development, do repetitive projects, can not find the sense of gain, and lose their direction.
In view of this, he helped promote the automobile and introduced a series of measures to promote the growth and renewal of designers.
On the one hand, "brings in" . Internationally, we recruit senior talents overseas, welcome overseas students to do internships in enterprises, and cooperate with CCS, AC, Royal College of Art and other universities on special projects. In China, the "Design Psychology" course is set up in cooperation with Hunan University, taught by college teachers and forward-looking designers of Trumpchi, and developed in a workshop to design topics together; it is relatively new to the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Microsoft Asia Research Institute, etc. Research institutions and media institutions such as Xinhuanet cooperate to explore cooperative AI software design and research forward-looking directions...
On the other hand, "goes out" .Establish forward-looking design centers in Shanghai and Los Angeles to allow employees to rotate; recommend designers to go to CCS, Finland and other places for training, the cycle is as long as 1 year, or as short as 1-2 months, mainly for ability improvement training; in Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts Set up training bases for corporate designers to serve as mentors and teach graduate students; using the GAC Design Contest as a starting point, the top eight students who have won awards can go to GAC for internships. Online courses and other forms to teach everyone...
In short, through various methods to bring new information, explore new possibilities, break the lifeless atmosphere, and help designers grow in the " freshness".
Xingchen Dahai
In April 2016, Zhang Fan was promoted to the vice president of GAC Research Institute. This means that he is not only leading the design, but also in charge of market planning, product positioning, and marketing promotion. Of course, More is to participate in the planning and decision-making of the future development of the entire automobile research institute.
He believes that as a leader of an organization, his task is not only to point out the direction and tasks for designers, but more importantly, to encourage and cultivate the entire team to achieve the sustainable development of team creativity .
Zhang Fan hopes that GAC will not just be a state of being behind closed doors, but will extend its tentacles to all parts of the world. To this end, he is intensively promoting the overseas pilot technology center of the GAC Research Institute.
The project is mainly divided into two parts, one is the pilot technology, mainly about unmanned vehicles, unmanned vehicles, intelligent network connection and new energy (including new materials), hoping to absorb local resources and talents, and feed back the domestic .
The other is the forward-looking design of conceptual modeling. On the one hand, a forward-looking outpost is established abroad, with reference to the international perspective; on the other hand, it absorbs outstanding local talents and experience that have been accumulated for many years.
"We are looking for talents with international experience and vision to join our team to help our designers further improve. But this is not the only way for me to develop the team. We are also establishing design studios in Los Angeles and Shanghai,I hope I can draw inspiration from home and abroad and get different perspectives. "Zhang Fan said.
In the future, cars will transform from driving machines into drivable living spaces, and people will expect to be able to do more while traveling. As a result, emerging technologies will have a huge impact on car design Impact , like smart phones, people’s requirements for car design will be higher and broader, which brings challenges and opportunities for designers.
At the same time, China’s huge market has given Chinese brands a growth. The fertile soil. Zhang Fan believes that Chinese people know the Chinese market best, and Chinese brands can empathize with Chinese culture, so they have a greater chance of success. Nowadays, many Chinese have returned to China from North America and Europe. He predicts that it will be more in the future. Many.
With the increasing strength of Chinese designers, Chinese designers have begun to go under the spotlight.
Chinese brand, it is time to prove itself to the world .
Written at the end:
Zhang Fan’s growth The process is very inspirational, and the resume background is also very bright.
In the eight years of Mercedes-Benz, he has grown from a newcomer to a lifelong designer; in the ten years of GAC, he has changed from a designer to a leader in automobile design. In the past 18 years, he has Assiduously and tirelessly, I have also witnessed the persistent exploration of "original and independent" in China's car design from scratch, from nothing to excellence.
Car design is not necessarily the most profitable, but it is for Zhang Fan. The most fulfilling. He said that the greatest significance of work is his own creation, which can truly have a certain effect on the entire human society and leave happy memories in people’s lives. This is his happiness and value as an Autobot. Where.
Author: Qiu Yufang
Editor: Qiu Yufang
.
