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AD&P; > February 2014 > FEATURE > Susan Lampinen: A Colorful, Creative Designer Who Cares > Gary S. Vasilash > gsv@autofeldguide.com q As Susan Lampinen notes, exterior color can make a huge diference in the way a vehicle is perceived. Shapely sheet metal with a curdled color simply doesn't work. There is seemingly an obligatory uniform for automotive designers, which goes along the lines of black sport jacket, black T-shirt, black jeans, and possibly a variation on primary colors for footwear. Not so for Susan Lampinen. Even though she is a group chief designer at Ford . . . and not only because the group that she happens to lead is Color & Material Design.* Lampinen is nothing if not colorful in her expression, visual, verbal and sartorial. She speaks with a level of commitment and passion that is the obverse of monochromatic. Lampinen, a 1990 grad of the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, has been with Ford since 1999 and has had her present position since 2005. During this period of time she's been a participant in helping manifest the visual identity of both Ford and Lincoln. While someone 26 by Gary S. Vasilash > Editor-In-Chief might think that the identity is primarily predicated on the shape of the sheet metal and the architecture of the instrument panel, Lampinen points out, "You could design a beautiful vehicle, and if you don't get the material quality right, the color right, and the detail right, you have a huge impact on how the vehicle is perceived. It's like putting on a bad suit." Let's stay with color. Lampinen describes many of the colors that Ford used back in the 1980s and mid-90s as "silly colors." Things like purplely pinks. Things that she and her team worked to purge from the pallet. That said, she acknowledges that the market tends to select from a rather limited group of colors: white, black, silver. So given that state of reality, given that they listen to input from customers, dealers, and senior management, Lampinen says that over the past few years they've been working on those colors to create variations, such as more of a champagne tint to some of the whites, a "jetter black," and a silver with greater travel, greater efect. "We used to have what I call 'glossy cement' for our silver. That had to go." On the materials front, Lampinen is a strong supporter of implementing fabrics that have a minimum of 25% recycled, renewable yarns, a fgure that they are boosting to 35 to 40%, and are doing this not simply for U.S. models, but are going global with the program. Presently, there are 41 diferent fabrics that are used in 15 vehicle programs with the recycled material, material that, Lampinen admits, was once more expensive because there wasn't an infrastructure in place for the materials. "Prices are now pretty similar," she