Sophie Luu, Sabina Hall, Fabrizio D’Antonio, James Rossano, Kaiome Groudan
We started pretty quickly with the idea of going fully minimal and skipping the grill altogether. Electric cars don’t actually need one, so we didn’t want to just fake it for the sake of tradition or force a typical car front onto cardboard. We kept coming back to EVE from WALL-E as a reference, which helped shape this smooth, almost organic form that still feels futuristic and clean.
A lot of our process ended up being trial and error, especially with the headlights. They had way more variables than we expected. We first tried using hot glue, but it didn’t really get us where we wanted. After that, we switched to laser cut acrylic and started shaping it with a heat gun, going through multiple iterations before the form started to make sense. To improve the glow, we added a middle diffusion layer, which helped spread the light more evenly instead of it coming out super harsh and direct. That ended up making a big difference in how polished it felt.
Along the way, we also experimented with thinning down cardboard to create a subtle grill alternative, something that gestures at the feature without fully committing to it. Overall, the process was a lot of testing, adjusting, and figuring things out as we went.
