New Honda Advanced Design Studio in Milan

Segno Milano S.r.l. is the latest car design studio to open in Milan, not too far from the Mercedes-Benz studio that is already active in Como. The mission of Segno Milano is to look at all sorts of trends, fashion and life style of the metropolis and to produce advanced design proposals for Japanese car maker Honda.

Officially, the studio is completely independent of Honda but the Japanese automaker is the exclusive “customer” of the studio. Segno Milano s.r.l. has been put together by Luciano D’Ambrosio, a graduate of the Royal College of Art, who previously worked with Ford in Cologne (4 years) , Italdesign (4 years) and as director of exterior design at Stile Bertone (9 years). D’Ambrosio left Bertone to become an independent design consultant in February 2000.

Segno is headquartered in the heart of Milano, close to Piazza Repubblica. By the end of this year it will employ a staff of ten designers, design analysts and administrators in its 200 sq.m. offices

Designers there will essentially design cars using traditional 2D tools and each designer will be equipped with a drawing board to draw cars in orthogonal views, to build 1:5 scale (and full scale) for model making. At this stage the studio has no plans to build models 'in house'. Model construction will be contracted to specialists in the Milano and Torino area.

Interestingly, the opening of the new advanced design studio comes a month after Pininfarina made public their association with Honda, started a quarter of a century ago.