Casestudy

Overview
Name: Josef MittlmeierCompany: University of Regensburg
Location: Regensburg, Germany
Industry: Education®
Product: CorelDRAW Graphics Suite

Pretty Smart!
Who says that students have too little to do with theeal working world? 14 art students at the Universityof Regensburg have been proving just the opposite.
On behalf of Smart they are designing striking body
paintwork for the little town car. CorelDRAW® Graphics
Suite has been there from the start – and is playing nosmall part in the project's success.

Stefanie Ortner's design is inspired by the wings of the Mountain Apollo butterfly.

delivered with flying colours. Six months later, the results
were on show: On 8th/9th May 2012, the Altes Rathaus hosted
an exhibition of 14 original, daring and spectacular designs –including that of the winner, 24-year old student teacher
Johannes Steubl.

The idea was clear from the outset: Daimler AG wanted to createa small, environmentally friendly car with custom-designablebodywork and easily replaceable parts. A compact car thatwould afford its users individuality and mobility in the tightconfines of today's megacity. In short: Daimler AG wanted theurban mobility of the future.

All the tools you need: CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite
But let's take it step by step. “Design to order” was the nameof the seminar that accompanied the students' project work.
Run by Academic Senior Counsellor Josef Mittlmeier anddoctoral student Florian Pfab, all the seminar students wereallowed to take part. “Naturally, at first we were primarily
interested in looking at the basics of product design, witha focus on bodywork design,” Josef Mittlmeier explains.

Matthias Weich took his inspiration from the mustard plant.

The winning motif went on display in October 2012 - on a real Smart.

Now a group of students from Regensburg has successfully
continued work on the dream of the Smart as an objet d'art.
Their brief was: Take inspiration from Regensburg's cultural
tradition and create original body paintwork. The impetus wasprovided by Martin C. Klein, the Daimler branch manager inRegensburg. Today he admits that when he proposed theInstitut für Kunsterziehung (Institute for Art Education) “teaseout the diverse appealing parallels between the City of Regensburg and the Smart car in an artistic way”, the response was a
mixture of confusion and curiosity. The Institute's Director,Dr. Prof. Birgit Eiglsperger was confident, however, and“Then the students were asked to get out and look for
inspiration in our beautiful old city, make sketches and takephotos.” They returned with a hugely diverse range of ideas:
from the rare Mountain Apollo butterfly which is native to theRegensburg area, through Roman war chariots, Donauwellecake, and cathedral windows to the Scottish Door of theRomanesque St. James's Church. “Next it was a question ofscanning in the sketches and photos, as well as the 2D modelof the Smart, and then formally linking the two together in aconsistent way.” To do this the seminar participants usedCorelDRAW® Graphics Suite.

Casestudy“Rarely has the use of Corel software been so coherent, indispensable and universal as on this project,” Josef Mittlmeier observes.
“I prepared the teaching material using CorelDRAW® Graphics
Suite and Corel PHOTO-PAINT® and integrated them into myPowerPoint presentations. The students created, perfected andmodified their drafts with CorelDRAW®, and they preparedand visualised their Smart models with Corel PHOTO-PAINT®
and CorelDRAW®.
This was no easy task and demanded huge effort from theparticipants. “The surface of the compact Smart doesn't offer
much space for painting. The functional elements have to beintegrated. This small, dynamic car is full of vibrant shapes.”
This made it all more important that the students were able
to rely on a fast, intuitively operated software with which
they were able to produce perfectly scalable vector graphics.
“A few students worked a lot with computer programmes,others mostly drew by hand. Overall the creative processcalled for the two tools in tandem,” Mittlmeier says. Againand again the students discussed their drafts with each otherduring their seminars. Then came the modifications andchanges. “Here too, CorelDRAW® has proved itself to be an
excellent tool. With just a few clicks, the students were able
to run through diverse draft variants, change colours, definecurves, and apply shadows.”
The result was some surprising creations. Regine Lenhardt
presented a Smart disguised as a Roman war chariot.
“Regensburg has an illustrious Roman past,” she explains.
“I think it's great that the students thought organically: The
shape of the car was mostly integrated into the creations ina highly original way,” says 53-year-old Mittlmeier.
Stefanie Ortner, for example, dressed the Smart up in theguise of the Mountain Apollo butterfly. One truly striking
feature here was the car's indicator, which doubled as one of
the butterfly's orange-coloured eye marks. Johannes Steubl,
who took first place, was inspired by the Scottish Door ofSt. James's Church: He borrowed the ornamentation on the1,000-year-old columns of the portal: winding tendrils thatare vaguely reminiscent of a modern tattoo and which lend
the Smart an almost mystical appearance.
The students were able to work at the many CorelDRAW®
Graphics Suite workstations that the university provides. “Thereare almost 20 CIP pools at the uni,” Josef Mittlmeier explains.
“CIP” stands for “Computer Investment Programme”. The
computer pool aims to provide the students with access tothe internet, to computer capacity and to special software.
“In this way it was possible for the project participants to workin the computer lab, in the lecture hall and even at home.”
Industry and art: a traditional duo at the University ofRegensburg
Collaboration between industry and the university's Institut fürKunsterziehung is already something of a tradition. From 2002
to 2003 sculptures, pictures and photographs around the themeof “bread” were created with the support of high-end bakery
chain, Hofpfisterei, in Munich. Next year Mittlmeier will bestarting a project with AVL, the world's biggest privately owned
company for the development of train engine systems withinternal combustion engines, as well as instrumentation andtest systems.
Incidentally, the “smART” project wasn't merely a theoretical
exercise for talented art students — the winning design was
produced for real: printed on foil and then applied to theSmart car. CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite was used during theproject to vectorise the visual elements for the airbrushstencils and modify them to fit the bodywork of the carwhich was unveiled to the press and public in October 2012.
“One couldn't wish for a more beautiful ambassador forCorelDRAW® Graphics Suite.”

Annalena Schabus came second: Her source of inspiration was Regensburg's city arms.

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