Introduction

I've been blogging since 2005, first at the late, lamented Two Blowhards blog and since 2010 at Art Contrarian. At both blogs I wrote a number of posts dealing with automobile styling. I want to write more often about car styling, but I've been getting the feeling that Art Contrarian readers would prefer that I stick closer to the subjects of painting and illustration and minimize the styling content. The way out of this problem was to start the blog you are now reading.

Unlike Art Contrarian, I have no strong point of view or agenda. But I do have a minor one. Note that I use the word "Style" in this blog's name and not the word "Design." That's because, aside from two evolutionary periods, the appearance of cars has been driven more by fashion than evolution or the bold, clean-sheet-of-paper approach implicit in "design." You can read more about this in my e-book Automobile Styling. Really, it's all a matter of degree regarding what share of the effort of creating the appearance of a car is style as opposed to design, and I'll often apply the term "design" to its general appearance ("... the design of the 1949 Ford makes use of ...").

As for my qualifications, at one point I considered making automobile styling a career. However, I came to realize that I didn't have the stuff to be outstanding in that field. At the University of Washington I stared as an Industrial Design major, a field that required a year of basic architectural design. But I eventually shifted and ended up graduating in commercial art. After serving in the army, I entered graduate school and ended up as a Ph.D. (from Penn) demographer specializing in developing population forecasting software systems. This gave me a more rigorous scientific/engineering mindset than my undergraduate training offered. Throughout all those years my interest in automobile styling continued and I followed developments closely. I leave it to you, the reader, to judge the quality of the articles I will be posting here.

Due to my three posts per week commitment to Art Contrarian, my time for Car Style Critic will be limited to twice a week posting. Expect to find new posts on Mondays and Thursdays.