Meet the minds behind babyark
For someone who has spent his entire adult life designing some of the worldâs most iconic vehicles, it must have been somewhat surreal to sit down and talk about babies.Â
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But according to Frank Stephenson, babyarkâs director of design, and the man behind such design icons as the Mini Cooper, Fiat 500, Ferrari GranSport and Maserati Gran Turismo (to name just a few), whether youâre designing for speed or for safety, design is about desirability --Â
Itâs about love at first sight⌠But it also needs to serve a purpose.Â

When meeting Shy Mindel, babyarkâs founder and CEO, in London for the first time, Frank was more than impressed, and he immediately knew this was a project he wanted to take on. His mind was already racing on how to design what they believed could eventually revolutionize the way car seats are engineered.Â
Shy showed him the highly innovative SafeCoil⢠steel coil shock-absorbing system that would be the engineering basis of the car seat; a system that had previously been pioneered in armored vehicles and that greatly limited the exposure to impact.
The need for change
Unlike the ever-changing world of cars, baby car seats had remained largely unchanged for 50 years. Frank recalls entering a baby store and being struck by just how clunky and unappealing all the car seats appeared. Everything looked just the same. None seemed designed from the perspective of the tiny passenger whose protection is pivotal, with his comfort and safety in a moment of need at the forefront.
 Form equals function
âMost designers talk about form following function, but Iâve never believed in that â for me, form equals function,â says Frank.
This should be even more true for a product specifically designed to protect lifeâs most precious and vulnerable being.
Nature knows best
In design, as in life, itâs easy to overcomplicate things and itâs difficult to simplify.
When it comes to design, nature knows best. âIâve always looked to nature for answers. From speed to protection, nature always has the right answer,â says Frank. âNature is not a trendy thing. It's timeless."
babyarkâs unique egg-shape not only visually sets it apart from any other car seat, it lies at the heart of both the design and engineering philosophy.
âOn the one hand, the egg shape is natureâs most robust structure. The egg protects the life that is growing inside it. It is a perfect shape for designing safety. But it also is a symbol of fertilityâŚof life itself.â It is also what first grabs the eye and creates that immediate bond between the new parent and the product.
Design vs Engineering
In the creation of any product, there is a constant tension between the design and engineering; between form and function; between fantasy and reality; between experience and economics. Ultimately, engineering has to bring the design to life. It has to both look and function great.
Having worked for the automobile industry with some of the worldâs most innovative engineers, Frank understands how valuable harmony is between designer and engineer.
 âMost products are first engineered, then the designer has to find a way to work around that. With Shy, the process was much more seamless. We had a constant back and forth of great ideas, feeding off each otherâs creativity. I ended up thinking like an engineer and Shy like a designer.âÂ
 âFrom the get-go, Frank perfectly understood the mechanics and performance we were aiming for. He designed the product and then our engineers jumped through hoops to come up with the needed solution to any given design,â adds Shy. âIt took us 3 years of hard work and over 200 different safety tests, most of them not even required by regulation, but the outcome was worth it. It was really all about setting a new standard for safety.â
New benchmark. New materials
In addition to superior design and engineering, and a tireless approach to safety testing, one of the key components to the process was adopting materials that had never been used in a safety seat before.
âWith babyark we pioneered the use of carbon fiber, one of the worldâs sturdiest yet extremely lightweight material for the frame,â says Shy. âInstead of traditional foam, we looked at the protective gear of extreme athletes, who use D3O⢠, the worldâs most technologically-advanced impact absorbing polymer. If itâs good for them, itâs worth using here.
"Itâs definitely a significant upgrade from what was previously being usedâ, adds Frank.
There were no shortcuts on this journey. Both Frank and Shy didnât just want to make slight improvements to the existing alternatives, they wanted to push the boundaries on whatâs possible.Â
After winning the CES Innovation Award, and gearing up towards pre-sale of the seat in the U.S, both Frank and Shy are extremely excited about the future, and the impact their work will have on the safety of future generations.
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