Abstract:

The Spring 2020 general lockdown has forced a redesign of the final events to which the function of narrating the projects realised by the students is usually delegated in the Design schools.

In the resulting and inevitable dematerialising process of such events, the biggest change concerns the role of images: from a role of handmaidens accompanying the physical model (usual focal point of the final exhibitions) in the description of the project, they become the true and only protagonist of the design narrative.

The case study chosen to describe this transformation is the 11th edition of the specializing master course in Transportation & Automobile Design at the Politecnico di Milano, which ended in July 2020. The usual local exhibition of the thesis projects was transformed into an international online event. The narration of the projects involved the construction of a presentation fully and only centred on videos and images. These videos and images didn't describe only the reference scenario, the user's needs and the first formal proposals, but also the full final concept with several CMF proposals.

The time available to the students to present their projects was shorter than usual due to the pace imposed by an online presentation, making it necessary to do a lot of work to prepare the material. The quality of the images and, mainly, of the videos was therefore necessarily higher; specific training courses, not originally planned, were introduced to support the students achieve this new goal. The material produced was also used to create a virtual exhibition on the Master's website.

Making images the main focus of the narrative will allow greater adaptability in relation to rapidly changing situations. So, the experience gained in an emergency situation will prove useful also in the future, probably already at the end of the twelfth edition of the Master's course (July 2021), given the still uncertain scenarios in which we are.

Keywords:

Narrative images, car design, scenario description, creative process.