With the “Kodo – Soul of Motion” design language, Head Designer Ikuo Maeda set a bold new direction for design at Mazda. Launched ten years ago at the 2010 LA Motor Show with the concept car Shinari, it has been defining and elevating Mazda design ever since. One decade and a stage of evolvement later, Kodo Design is as popular as ever, with cars designed using its approach continuing to win awards, including the World Design Car of the Year for the Mazda3 in 2020.
Since its inception ten years ago, Kodo Design has been at the heart of a number of Mazda cars - from a new interpretation of the iconic Mazda MX-5 roadster to Mazda’s first battery electric vehicle, the MX-30¹. Yet the essential idea behind Kodo Design has remained unchanged: to explore the powerful and irresistible beauty of natural movement in a still object.
The word Kodo literally translates as “heartbeat”, but with the added meaning of filling something with life; of giving it a soul. This idea is central to the way Mazda has always thought about design: “In Japan, we feel that craftsmen inject life into what they make. We believe that a form sincerely and painstakingly made by human hands gets a soul,” Ikuo Maeda explains. Thus, “Soul of Motion” takes on a double meaning, expressing both the essence of motion and the “soul” imbued in the car by Mazda’s master craftsmen.
The first designs were strongly inspired by the image of a cheetah about to pounce, while more recent iterations increasingly focus on evoking a powerful and emotional design with as few elements as possible. A turning point for this second phase of Kodo Design was reached with the two awe-inspiring concept cars RX-Vision and Vision Coupe.
Introduced at the 2015 and 2017 Tokyo Motor Show respectively, they anticipated the new elegance and yet more pronounced minimalist aesthetic of recent interpretations of Kodo Design. Dynamic and emotional forms are achieved by shaving off any unnecessary elements to bring out the very essence of beauty and motion. By eliminating character lines, for example, an empty space is created on the vehicle’s side panels that functions as a blank, endlessly changing canvas for the play of light and shadow – a “less is more” aesthetic that is strongly informed by Mazda’s Japanese heritage.
The cars created using the Kodo Design language have continuously received international acclaim. Both the RX-Vision and the Vision Coupe were named the “Most Beautiful Concept Car of the Year”, and the revamped Mazda MX-5 won the “World Car Design Award” in 2015. Recent highlights include a Red Dot Award 2020 in the category “Product Design” for the Mazda CX-30 and the new Mazda MX-30, while the Mazda3 took home the “World Car Award 2020” in the coveted design category.
As Mazda continues to blend a love of driving with great interior and exterior design, the simplistic elegance and emotional appeal of Kodo Design will remain essential ingredients of the brand’s identity.
After ten years of sustained success, Kodo Design continues to push the limits of car design and define the future of Mazda.
