7 SERIES DESIGNER CHRIS BANGLE TO JOIN SAMSUNG?

Chris Bangle, the former director of design at BMW, has apparently been hired to design cell phones, tablet computers (TCs) and netbooks. Unconfirmed rumours say he is now the head of design at Samsung, the South Korean electronics giant.

Bangle is certainly the most famous, if not infamous, car designer of our time. As chief of design he was responsible, even though his colleague Adrian van Hooydonk actually designed it, for approving the previous-generation BMW 7 Series, which featured a very controversial rear end. His design style, called “flame surfacing”, heralded a new era of kinks, convexes and concaves in automotive sculpturing. A number of other car manufacturers have now adopted this style.

Back when he headed up BMW’s DesignworksUSA studios he oversaw the creation of many different products which were not even related to cars. He will now be tasked with sketching beautiful, functional tech gadgets from Samsung whose primary tasks will be to eliminate Apple, Blackberry and Nokia’s dominance of the handheld multi communications gadget market.