Marketing Masquerading as Design
Read part 1 on LinkedIn Read part 2 on LinkedIn
Part 1
When Vicky Kaushal says “in life, take a curvv”, I roll my eyes and skip the ad. But when designers of the car describe their work as a “striking silhouette coupled with dynamic proportions, expressing a strong character while also being effortlessly elegant” I scratch my head and wonder what is going on!?
Take for example Lexus’s L-finesse design philosophy. It sounds less like car design and more like a perfume ad narrated in a whisper. It reads like a Michelin-starred menu for cars, where every course is garnished with words that sound profound but taste suspiciously like air. It is “leading-edge design and technology applied with finesse”. However, here “finesse” isn’t just elegance, but a spiritual journey into Japanese hospitality, ambient lighting, and something called “seamless anticipation”. Lexus insists it offers “incisive simplicity” which “cuts through complexity” to reveal “purity of purpose.” Yet the explanation involves seven adjectives and a metaphor about joyfully intuitive technology. The irony is thicker than the owner’s manual. Then we get “intriguing elegance,” the part where the car body becomes a “visual journey.” Is this a sedan or a Terrence Malick movie? Finally the spindle grille, the brand’s most polarizing feature, which coincidentally gets no lyrical defense. Maybe a car can be beautifully designed without needing to sound like it is preparing for a TED Talk.
I tried to imagine a product from another industry I am more familiar with, and how ridiculous it would be to describe it in a similar language. MS Excel isn’t just a spreadsheet – it’s a canvas of infinite potential. Through X-Formula, we embrace Dynamic Clarity, Structured Fluidity, and Anticipatory Tabulation. Your spreadsheet knows what you need before you do. PivotTables whisper insights. VLOOKUP becomes a meditative ritual. Every cell exists in serene readiness. At the heart of X-Formula lies our Dynamic Data Synergy, where spreadsheets don’t merely compute – they intuit. Like a master calligrapher foreseeing the stroke of a brush, Excel’s Infinite Grid Intelligence anticipates your needs before you type “=SUM.” When you highlight cells A1 to A5, Excel doesn’t just sum them – it orchestrates a symphony of numerical harmony, presenting results in a joyfully intuitive pop-up that is faster than a rounding error. Our Quantum Calculation Layer distills chaos into purity of purpose, transforming nested IF statements into elegant logic ballets. Why write =VLOOKUP when you can deploy XLOOKUP+, a feature so advanced it redefines the relationship between data and meaning.
Of course I am being silly and the comparison is unfair. But even if spreadsheets only need to address the pragmatic/utilitarian goals of the consumer while cars have to appeal to the emotional/aspirational needs, the separation between what is designed versus how it is marketed is generally clear in digital products.
Part 2
As a designer who tries to remain grounded in clarity and purpose, I often find myself puzzled by the language used in the world of automobile design. While I understand that the discipline is largely focused on form – on sculpting the aesthetic and emotive qualities of a vehicle – the way this work is articulated often feels disconnected from the rigour I associate with design. Descriptions of cars as “muscular,” “dynamic,” “vibrant,” or “soulful” seem to drift into a poetic style that resists scrutiny. These adjectives, like those used in high-end culinary circles – “rustic,” “playful,” “bold” – offer mood and atmosphere but little insight into the functional or conceptual rationale behind design decisions. What’s particularly frustrating is how marketing language infiltrates what should be design discourse.
Car companies now create elaborate “design languages” with names like “L-Finesse,” “Keen Edge,” and “Fluidic Sculpture” – terms that sound impressive but convey little concrete information about the actual design principles or intentions. This florid language may serve marketing goals, but it clouds our understanding of what the designer actually brings to the table. What problem was being solved? What constraints shaped the outcome? How do form and function relate? Instead, the discourse tends to lean heavily on metaphors and emotional appeal, inviting a kind of mystique around the process rather than clarity. This keyword-driven approach to inspire new design directions often produces a circular logic: designers select evocative keywords to guide their process, then marketers use those same keywords to describe the result, creating a self-reinforcing bubble of vague terminology.
Interestingly automotive design has a precise technical vocabulary. Terms like “A-pillar,” “beltline,” “tumblehome,” “DLO” and “bone line” refer to specific elements and characteristics of vehicle design. These terms serve legitimate communication purposes within the industry. The problem arises when this technical precision gets abandoned in favor of emotional marketing speak. To be clear, aesthetics have emotional weight. But when form becomes the primary locus of value, and the vocabulary used to describe it borders on the self-congratulatory or the imprecise, it becomes difficult to engage with automobile design critically. As designers, we must ask: can we speak of beauty and emotion without abandoning logic, clarity, and intentionality? Can we find language that respects form without fetishizing it?
I feel automobile design would benefit from a more transparent, meaningful vocabulary that bridges the gap between technical precision and accessible explanation. Designers should be able to articulate their choices in terms that explain rather than obscure the rationale behind formal decisions. The current reliance on flowery, flaky adjectives serves neither designers nor consumers well.