May 27, 2009
Awesome(ly) Small Target Market Alert: Japanese Rockers
Take a look at this film clip and tell me that a design project based around these guys wouldn’t be absurd fun.
They’re a little bit macho, a little bit fem, a little bit psycho and yet oddly controlled. Overlay this on Japanese car culture and I have a feeling that there’s creative space for some suitably bonkers vehicles.
zOMG! Have you not heard of Bosozuko or Garuchan?
Oh, my dear Ben, I certainly have! I was just wondering out loud how you might design a new car based around these guys.
Totally in love with the classic car tribes in Japan. In fact I’d love to do a photo essay on them if I ever get to the land of the rising sun.
Sorry, I should have guessed you’d be on top of that.
Do these guys even want a new car? They’ve rejected contemporary, normal, clothing, haircuts and music, why would they drop five figures on a massive consumer durable?
I think you’d have to be really, really good to avoid a pastiche of retro forms.
You’re in a Pop Will Eat Itself situation where these guys are riffing on a departed (sub) culture to make a new (sub) culture and then using that new culture as a riff for a new object. It’d be so easy to end up like a Monkeys tribute band doing a Beatles cover.
This is not to say I think it’s a bad idea; I think it’s awesome (and I love the idea of the Monkeys covering the Beatles).