Saturday, March 5
10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Automotive Design:
Concepts and Careers
by Raffi Minasian

Raffi Minasian is a freelance artist, designer, widely published illustrator and writer working with a wide variety of clients. He holds degrees in both Product Design and in Transportation Design and his impressive twenty-year career includes aircraft interior design for Boeing, toys for Mattel and McDonald’s, consumer products for Microsoft, Polaris, and Rainbird, and car designs for Toyota, Subaru, Moal Coachbuilders and The Franklin Mint — he was design director of Franklin Mint’s precision diecast scale model cars.

Charger illustration

He has taught illustration and car design at several notable universities and design colleges and his work has been seen on such television shows as “World of Wheels.” He has designed more than 300 different model cars, full-sized cars, and consumer products, toys, and home accessories, and was recently awarded the “Award of Excellence” from Car Styling magazine for his essay “Transmagination: The Automobile in the 21st Century.”

Slammer illustration

During this presentation, Raffi will explore the study of design and particularly how the process applies to car design. He will detail how general design principles are used to create an automobile in practice.

Raffi’s extensive automotive-designer experiences will be of great interest to the general public, and especially interesting for students planning on entering the automotive-design profession in illustration, model-car design, clay-model building, metal and fiberglass fabrication, product design, and more.

Mr. Minasian restores cars in his spare time and maintains a small collection of sports and GT (grand touring) cars. In addition to on-going product design, he manufactures volume production parts for the classic and muscle car aftermarket and specialty parts for hot rods and customs.

FREE with admission.

Links to Diecast Car Collectors Club and online stores:

: Diecast Car Collectors Club: www.diecast.org; scale model cars & motorcycles; art gallery of automotive subjects; military & aircraft scale models