Daimler promoted Gorden Wagener to chief design officer and added him to the company's board.
Daimler AG has elevated the role of design inside the company by creating the post of chief design officer and naming 48-year-old Gorden Wagener to fill the post and a seat on the company’s board of management.
The creation of the new board-level post will strengthen the significant and responsibility of design for the company products and designs, Daimler said as it announced the new post.
Wagener has been at the helm of the globally operating Design unit of Daimler AG since mid-2008 and with his international team he is responsible for the design of all the company’s brands and products.
Daimler’s design stuff is headquartered Sindelfingen, outside Stuttgart, and also operates Advanced Design Studios in California, Italy and China, and at five more of the Group’s sites.
“Good design is much more than simply creating beautiful products: it combines function with fascination and gives brand values an unmistakable form,” noted Dieter Zetsche, CEO of Daimler AG and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars.
“We are delighted that, under the leadership of Gorden Wagener, our design team is among the best in the industry. Because the global sales success of our vehicles is, after all, in part due to their outstanding design.”
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At Daimler, design characterizes the brand within a holistic approach that essential that showcase both the products and the brands in harmony.
Wagener’s signature as the Head of Design is borne by all the current passenger cars from Mercedes-Benz, including the high-performance models from the Mercedes-AMG brand, the most exclusive models from Mercedes-Maybach, and also the products from the smart brand plus all the Group’s commercial vehicles, Zetsche said.
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Currently Wagener is developing a design strategy that supports the implementation of “CASE,” which stands for the strategic pillars of connectivity, autonomous driving, flexible and Shared & Services and electric drive systems.
Going forward the elements of the CASE strategy will be combined with one another by the company.
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Wagener was born in Essen, Germany, and earned an Industrial Design degree at the University of Essen. He went on to specialize in Transportation Design at The Royal College of Art in London before he joined Mercedes-Benz in 1997.