For the past 30 years Smart Design has been turning insight and innovation into successful consumer experiences. When we reached out to Smart about gathering their team for their take on the Kia Soul, they appointed their IDSA winning Barcelona-based design director Blake McEldowney to spearhead the project. Always approaching projects with both form and function in mind, Blake’s first inspiration was the clash of culture from Smart’s offices spread across New York, San Francisco, and Barcelona in what he calls a “Soul City Mash-Up.” As a source of inspiration, the designers looked at what makes these cities great, both in terms of differences and similarities. “We wanted to reflect the soul of each city. The vehicle allows a unique degree of flexibility, customization, and expression for each unique culture and energy,” says Blake. By using futuristic digital LCD and multicolored LEDs for the exterior, the driver can express their soul through a set of color schemes that reflect the city, mood or even the event they are going to. For the interior, the idea was to encourage social interaction via physical form and custom technology applications. “We wanted each Kia Soul user to have their own profile that adjusts the settings of the vehicle to the person and their driving style.” From both the driver and passenger’s favorite music to location-based apps and communication tools, cloud computing plays an important role in the car. Blake’s experience packaging innovative technologies that support how we live and uncovering needs we didn’t know we had, is the only way Blake and his team truly saw fit to express themselves.
Name: Blake McEldowney (photo far left)
Hometown: Wellington, New Zealand
Currently Resides In: Barcelona, Spain
Ultimate Roadtrip: Back in 2001, I did a 3-month cross country trip from LA to NY, not sure I could top that… But Barcelona to Greece following the Mediterranean coast would rock.
Favorite Music: Downbeat Dub styles like ‘Fat Freddie’s Drop’ and ‘Salmonella Dub’
What Does Soul Expression Mean To You? The ability to adapt and customize for use, user, mood, event, and environment easily. Intuitive interactions. The ability to share.
Name: Ivan Exposito (photo 2nd from left )
Hometown: Valencia, Spain
Currently Resides In: Barcelona, Spain
Design Philosophy: Always aim to get to the point where your personal creativity meets needs and expressions. Don’t harm anything or anybody during that journey.
5 Things You Can’t Live Without: Food, air, love, money, happiness.
What Personal Items Do You Have In Your Car: An umbrella, frisbee, skull wristband on the gearstick, and a bottle of cologne because I like my car to smell like me. Now I have one of those cherry air fresheners too. The smell reminds me of candies from my childhood.
Name: Jeff Hoefs (photo 3rd from left )
Hometown: A forest in Wisconsin
Currently Resides In: Brooklyn, New York
Ultimate Roadtrip: Ocean, mountains, and desert in one day
Favorite Music: Too embarrassing to admit
What Does Soul Xpression Mean To You? Just drive
Design Philosophy: Creating devices and installations that incorporate technology to inspire curiosity, creativity, and interaction in playful and meaningful ways.
Name: Mike Cheung (far right)
Hometown: Gainesville, Georgia
Currently Resides In: Burlingame, California
Ultimate Roadtrip: The experience. Load up with some essential supplies and hit the road with a simple checklist–#16: see a totem pole.
Favorite Music: I mostly listen to heavy/death metal…however, things like Sergio Mendes, Hooverphonic, A Perfect Circle, The White Stripes, and Beastie Boys are in there too.
Design Philosophy: I feel like the work I do should make the lives of others happier, easier to live, and filled with an increased awareness of their surroundings.
Creative Influences: People that do their own thing, make things out of nothing, and make something work the way they want it to work.
5 Things You Can’t Live Without: My downhill mountain bike, hot sauce, something to fix or modify, my eye glasses, pocket knife.
The HUD provides an augmented reality experience, mapping contextually relevant information directly into the driver’s view (such as the Parking Finder application shown here). Persistent data is relayed into the steering column display while the display area in the lower center of the window is the primary visual interface for the vehicle. Various applications can be accessed to customize the experience from changing the look of the displays and interior light effects, to adding or removing services as needed.
The future-inspired exterior resembles automotive concept cars with customizable light effects like the retro illuminated Kia logo, the hidden turn lights, and ambiance theme lights in the front and rear grills.
LED An array of glass integrated LEDs in the lower part of the side and rear windows allow an extreme degree of customization, with the possibility of using application-based themes or even display messages and animations.
The principles of simplicity, cleanliness and light customization have been applied to the interior design. The use of bench seats and a furniture-like treatment of the surfaces define the car as a social space. A persistent connection to the cloud provides a vast array of service options ranging from location-based to communication and entertainment. These services are mediated through the in-car screens, Heads-Up Display, interior lighting effects, and stereo system.
Removable elements extend the presence of the car into the city and your lifestyle, like the autonomous speaker set you can remove from the door panels to take with you.
Screen-printed solar cells in the roof harvest energy from the sun to power secondary car systems, like the auxiliary computer and induction charging tray in the console.
This card is your access point to the Soul community, including your personal or shared car and all enabled services. Your Soul ID stores your driving preferences so each time you get in the car, it adapts to your custom settings. Services are enabled, music is loaded, and you’re ready to drive.