We explore the traditional and current uses of large displays in automotive design and present new applications that make innovative use of large-format electronic displays

large-scale representations of vehicles has always been a fundamental requirement of the automotive design industry. This requirement has traditionally manifested itself in a variety of media, including full-scale blueprints, tape drawings, and 3D clay models. More recently, automotive design studios have begun to explore the use of large-scale digital displays in their design workflow. Often, the applications of these displays have direct analogues with traditional techniques; in other cases, new applications are evolving that use these displays to visualize and interact with design content in new ways. An interesting attribute of this evolution is that—unlike the desktop computer with its “one size fits all” universality—the size, resolution, and level of interactivity of these large displays and their applications vary depending on the physical and social settings of the task at hand.