Yamaha R-series: Deep dive with the chief of design in Japan

Case study

Noguchi San is the man behind the Yamaha YZF-R15. He’s the one who signed off on the design after numerous hours of drawing, detailing and what have you. The final result, as we all know, is astonishingly good. The R15, especially the R15M, is one of the most beautifully designed motorcycles on Indian roads. The target audience loves it! But it wasn’t easy for Noguchi San and his team.

“Maintaining the Yamaha R- design language has been the paramount requirement, ” he says. To an ordinary person, it may not seem too difficult. After all, the designers have a template in the form of the YZF-R1 and the YZF-R7 to follow. This, however, is easier said than done. The challenge is proportions and how well they balance them.

On an R7, the lines, cuts and creases might look good but to replicate it on the R15 is not easy since it is a much smaller motorcycle. That’s where the beauty of computers and clay modelling help.

Designers spend hours perfecting sketch after sketch, drawing various lines, observing how they flow and how they add to the style of the bike. This is followed by life-size scale modelling where these lines are viewed in actual size. It gives them perspective in real-life and a chance to see how these lines they’ve penned on the drawing board look like in real life. Here’s where the fine-tuning happens.

I could sense what Noguchi San and his team felt at this stage. The nerves, the questions about the design being accepted and more importantly their collective vision about the design coming to life. Akin to giving birth to a baby. I won’t forget how fondly Noguchi San spoke about the R15 coming to life.

Colour, colour, which colour?

It’s one thing to design the body panels and it’s a completely different challenge to lock in on the colours that the motorcycle will bear. Yamaha has a special studio for the same and designers take inspiration from everything imaginable to come up with colours of not just the main bodywork but the trims as well.

Form over function

When asked about who wins the tussle between form (design) and function (engineering), Noguchi San was quick to admit that ultimately design is important. The challenge, he says is to work around the constraints of engineering, while incorporating new concepts in an ever-evolving motorcycle market.

Aerodynamic winglets are the latest addition to super sports motorcycles and Noguchi San isn’t a big fan. Nevertheless, these are concepts that have to be integrated and Noguchi San loves the challenge that it brings to his design table. Nevertheless, making a motorcycle look good is always going to be a challenge that we mere mortals won’t ever understand.

The final word

Noguchi San says the design is integral to Yamaha's success and we couldn’t agree more. After all, look at the R1, R7, MT-09 or our very own R15. The R15, in fact, is one of the biggest contributors to the sales of the Japanese motorcycle manufacturer. Its design is one of the most attractive parts which makes people buy it.

Details on the R15, like the gills on the fuel tank, the light creases on the front fairing or the floating tail section. They were all conjured in the minds of people who look at the world differently. People who seek inspiration from almost everything they see. People like Noguchi San represent such gifted people. The glint in his eyes as he stood next to the R15 for a photo opportunity told us how proud he is of the creation that he’s signed off. We are surely going to appreciate motorcycle design in a lot more depth than we already do.