We had the distinct pleasure to interview award winning designer David Flores Loredo about their original and creative Electric guitar design work. David Flores Loredo is an award-winning industrial designer, that makes our world a better place with their original electric guitar works.
David Flores Loredo ("DFL") answered Design Interview ("DI") questions about their award-winning work Eagle Electric guitar. Interview questions prepared by Frank Scott.
DFL : The Eagle presents a lightweight, futuristic and sculptural design with a completely new design language, inspired by the Streamline and the Organic design philosophies.
DFL : I wanted to achieve the most beautiful and lightweight guitar that I could realize. In this creative process I didn’t wanted to do the same that I had seen before, because I had the feeling that something more advanced, more attractive and completely new could be done. With that feeling in mind I started to push the stablished limits with new ideas, shapes and volumes, with the objective of develop a futurist design but at the same time elegant and enough conservative to be understood as an electric guitar at first saw, without trespassing the “Most Advanced Yet Acceptable” line.
DFL : Probably take it to a serial manufacturing and offer this guitar to any guitarrist of the world.
DFL : The project toke approximately one year from the first sketches to the final result. Anyway, I would say that it toke all my life, because I could not realize it without all my experience collected till today.
DFL : This design was not commissioned. It was done as a particular challenge in the way to design, build and play the best electric guitar that I could do, the guitar of my dreams.
DFL : My main intention is to produce my work myself.
DFL : In this work converged three of my main passions and skills: engineering, design and guitar playing. I play the electric guitar since I was thirteen and I think that I love them since I was a child. I have been always attracted for them because of their beauty, their sound and because I love rock music. There is something coolest than an electric guitar? On the other side, I am also a passionate designer, so I found a great pleasure in the process of creation of this product from a blank paper with total creativity freedom, pushing the limits and following my own conception of beauty. Finally, as an engineer, I had the knowledge needed to take the design to the reality in a professional and accurate way. Because of all these reasons, it was a fascinating challenge to design, build and play my own guitar and I think that this project was for me simply unavoidable.
DFL : The target customer for this product is an experimented guitarist who plays high quality guitars but also desires a really different one, with a completely new design and high level of exclusivity, beauty and artistic value.
DFL : Apart from the classical guitar icons, which have not almost changed from the 50’s and 60’s there have been hundreds of futuristic electric guitar designs. Nevertheless, in my opinion, they are usually unbalanced and excessively futuristic. The Eagle is differentiated from these similar concepts because it is balanced, beautiful and elegant besides its clearly futuristic and defiant projection. Beyond its lightness and sound quality, it has a new fluid and sculptural design language that gives it a unique identity and a powerful presence.
DFL : The name Eagle came to me at a very early stage of the design process and from the first moment I considered that it was a beautiful and attractive name.
DFL : The design started from concept sketches on a blank paper and continued with Photoshop, complete Solidworks CAD modeling, rendering with Autodesk Showcase and fabrication with a CNC machine.
DFL : The most unique aspect is its clearly differentiated design.
DFL : Yes, I collaborated closely with Eduardo López and Rubén Bada. Eduardo López, further than being one of my best friends, is expert working with CNC machines and he has worked hard and highly motivated manufacturing this guitar. Rubén Bada is a professional musician and luthier and he has worked on the guitar painting, polishing and final adjustment. Finally, Palmira Escobar is professional photographer and she shooted the final studio pictures. Without their talent, this project would have been impossible.
DFL : I would say that it has been absolutely essential. This guitar has been designed through a 3D software and manufactured by a CNC machine and I think that it could not have been done without this quality and precision in any other way.
DFL : This project implied a deep research in the electric guitar engineering techniques in order to obtain high quality standards in sound, ergonomics and playability. Likewise, my previous experience developing organic porcelain lamps inspired by nature voronoi patterns, made me internalize the organic beauty of their shapes and apply them to this guitar. Finally, I studied in depth many of the main Streamline artworks to project their fascinating sense of flow and speed to this design.
DFL : First of all, the main challenge was to achieve a really new, attractive and lightweight design. With that clear objective in mind I decided to use a futuristic and beautiful organic-streamlined design language, which was for me a perfect combination. It needed a continuous effort in order to obtain a proportioned and elegant shape and to maintain at the same time an accurate balance between all its aesthetic characteristics: aggressiveness vs elegance, fluidity and softness vs speed and sharpness, futurism vs classicism. The main design lines were decided in a very early stage, but the challenge continued to the final detailed engineering in the process of the integration all the hardware components in small spaces and the adaptation to the real ergonomics without modifying the global design, in order to keep the flavor and the essence of the first sketches. Finally, the manufacturing process supposed another challenge in almost all the stages because the three-dimensional surfaces and concavities added quite more complexity and unexpected difficulties than in a common electric guitar.
DFL : Because it is always a pleasure to challenge at the highest level and I considered that this guitar was able to do it.
DFL : A project like this, which involves a complete creation process, always makes you improve yourself in many different skills. Nevertheless, principally I learned a lot about electric guitars design and manufacturing.
