2025 Automotive Exterior Design Commendation – Hyundai IONIQ 9

GOOD DESIGN AUSTRALIA’S AUTOMOTIVE DESIGN COMMENDATION IS A SPECIAL ACCOLADE WITHIN THE AUTOMOTIVE AND TRANSPORT CATEGORY THAT RECOGNISES EXCELLENCE IN AUTOMOTIVE DESIGN AND STYLING.

The Automotive Exterior Design Commendation celebrates vehicles that turn heads. In 2025, the spotlight falls on the Hyundai IONIQ 9, a three-row electric SUV designed for family life without compromise.

As the flagship of Hyundai’s award-winning EV range, the IONIQ 9 is a bold step towards the company’s vision of 21 electric vehicles by 2030. The brief demanded a revolutionary SUV that combines space, comfort, and performance, wrapped in a striking design and crafted with the customer in mind.

Simon Loasby, Senior Vice President and Head of Hyundai Design Center, guided us through the results. Its sleek, slippery silhouette exemplifies “aerosthetic,” a term coined by Hyundai to describe the fusion of aerodynamics and aesthetics.

Hyundai IONIQ 9 Exterior. Image: supplied

A new piece on the board

Hyundai set out to create an EV unlike anything seen before, shaped by how people use a vehicle and how they want it to look and feel.

“It was a collaborative effort across our organisation. A very strong virtual collaboration on how to create the most efficient shape and form,” said Simon.

“We wanted to do something unique for this generation of EVs, for people focused on efficiency, sustainability, and being in tune with nature.”

Nature played a central role. Diana Kloster and the colour team explored materials, human behaviour, and the environment to make the SUV both sustainable and efficient.

Simon explained that the IONIQ 9 rests on three pillars: sustainability, furnished space, and Parametric Pixels.

That look follows Hyundai’s “chess-piece” philosophy, ensuring each vehicle is distinct yet cohesive.

“IONIQ 9 is one of our chess pieces. Its silhouette is unique, and each model has a different move on the board, but together they form a cohesive group through design details like Parametric pixel lighting,” Simon said.

A defining feature is Hyundai’s Parametric Pixel, a futuristic-retro motif of geometric pixels across the front and rear. It unites all IONIQ vehicles and gives the SUV a striking, unmistakable identity.

“The base in IONIQ for us, the visual base, is the Parametric Pixel, which connects all of our electric cars,” Simon added.

Hyundai IONIQ 9 front. Image: supplied

Electric elegance

Building on its signature visual language, the IONIQ 9 exemplifies electric elegance. Its sleek ‘aerosthetic’ exterior fuses cutting-edge design with advanced electric vehicle technology, reflecting Hyundai’s commitment to aerodynamic efficiency and futuristic styling. A tapering boat-tail not only enhances airflow but also defines the vehicle’s distinctive silhouette.

“It’s a hugely aesthetic form, but we didn’t want complexity. We wanted a simple, puristic form,” Simon explained.

The Hyundai IONIQ 9 turns aerodynamics into art. Its seamless silhouette sweeps from hood to tail, embodying “aerosthetic”.

The exterior shapes the interior too. Shortening the hood, angling the windscreen, and positioning the roofline over the second row creates a spacious, airy cabin. Even the third row enjoys clever proportions, offering more room than the exterior suggests.

“The cabin length, from the rear separation edge to the bottom of the cowl, is much bigger than anything we’ve ever produced. That gives us the overall architecture inside,” Simon said.

Sustainability guided every decision.

“The black cladding on the exterior is actually from recycled tyres. The pigment comes from old car tyres that are ground up, creating a black pigment. That’s a wonderful way of reusing waste,” Simon added.

This vision first appeared in the SEVEN Concept, showcased in LA, with its lounge-like interior and circular design principles that directly shaped the IONIQ 9.

“We stacked IONIQ 9 with the most sustainable content we could and created the most efficient SUV,” Simon added.

Every curve and edge was carefully sculpted to minimise drag, creating a design that’s as efficient as it is striking.

“Aerodynamically, we’re down to a drag coefficient of 0.259, slightly lower than that of our Sonata ICE sedan, but achieved for a full three-row SUV. That means you use less energy, charge less, and lose less time charging,” he explained.

To achieve this balance of efficiency and style, the team relied on a guiding framework that ensured every design decision supported the vehicle’s overarching vision: the design priority pyramid.

Hyundai IONIQ 9. Image: supplied.

Designing with clarity

Woo-hyun Lee and Hyeong-soo Lee from Hyundai’s Exterior Design Team credited the design priority pyramid as one of the frameworks Simon brought to the project that shaped the vehicle’s design.

At the top of the pyramid is the “aerosthetic lounge,” said Simon. “The top portion is the three-second answer. Bump into your editor-in-chief, and you say, ‘That’s our aerosthetic lounge. It’s aerodynamic, beautifully aesthetic, and it’s a lounge space’.

This hierarchy keeps the team aligned, captures the car’s essence in seconds, and ensures every choice supports the top-level vision.

It allows the team to expand on key attributes like proportion and seating layout without losing focus. It guides every project, from full vehicles to interiors and even steering wheel redesigns, keeping priorities clear and design intentional.

Hyundai IONIQ 9 Lounge. Image: Supplied

Customer-centric design

For Simon, great design starts with the customer. The IONIQ 9 was guided by a customer-centric approach. The team was challenged to understand how people live, use and experience their cars, then solve the problems they might not even articulate.

“Good design isn’t about styling for the sake of it. It’s about understanding the customer’s perspective, their lifestyle”, he explained.

“We don’t just sit and sketch. We follow the journey our customers take. Watching people shows you what really frustrates them and where things can be improved.”

This philosophy is evident in the vehicle’s smallest details. Simon pointed to the cup holder as an example.

“One of my biggest frustrations in cars is trying to get a coin out of the cup holder. It’s a universal annoyance. “In our Palisade, or any of our cars since, it’s now the easiest cup holder to get a coin out of. It’s a small detail, but it reflects our design mindset and how we solve hidden problems through design.”

The same approach shapes bigger design decisions, referencing the iterative process to perfect the vehicle’s proportions and silhouette.

“To achieve the aerodynamic efficiency we wanted, we had to adjust the vehicle’s height. It’s about collaboration, debate, and looking at the big picture. That process created a more efficient and distinctive profile that works for customers every day,” Simon said.

A statement in motion

The IONIQ 9 embodies what’s possible when designers speak up, challenge ideas, and work together to find the best solutions.

“It’s a collaboration. It’s open to ideas from anywhere. Everybody speaks up, shares points, asks questions, and keeps asking until you get a solution you can accept,” Simon explained, emphasising curiosity and questioning assumptions.

“It’s a bit of an ‘I’ mindset, like a five-year-old asking ’why’ over and over until you find a solution you can accept,” he added.

Even seemingly fixed targets, like the car’s height, were open to debate as the team kept asking, ‘Why?’

Early on, they realised that sticking to the original numbers would compromise aerodynamics. Through discussion, questioning, and weighing all inputs, they decided to raise the roofline, creating a more efficient and distinctive profile. It’s a clear example of how collaboration, curiosity, and accountability drive the best design outcomes.

By aligning exterior and interior design and focusing on the priorities set out in the design pyramid, Hyundai crafted a car where function and beauty are inseparable.

The IONIQ 9 combines sustainability, human needs, and visual impact. It’s striking in style yet practical in performance, with every detail serving customers and reinforcing brand identity.

Good Design Australia congratulates Hyundai for reimagining what’s possible in automotive design.

2025 Livio Bonollo Award for Longevity

THE LIVIO BONOLLO AWARD FOR LONGEVITY HONOURS DESIGNS THAT ENDURE. NAMED AFTER PROFESSOR LIVIO BONOLLO, THE AWARD RECOGNISES WORK THAT STANDS THE TEST OF TIME, PROVING LONGEVITY IS ONE OF DESIGN’S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS.

Four decades on, the PB/5 Pedestrian Button’s rounded rectangle housing, bold arrow and satisfying push remain a constant at crossings across Australia and beyond. It is a fixture of daily life that still does its job.

Developed in the early 1980s by Nielsen Design for the NSW Roads Authority, the PB/5 brought Industrial Design, acoustics and traffic engineering into a single, resilient unit. Key figures included the late Carl Nielsen, recipient of the Australian Design Prize, lead designer David Wood and Industrial Designer Graham Paver.

Nielsen Design Director, Adam Laws, who joined the studio in 1982, sat down with Good Design Australia to reflect on why the PB/5 endures and what it teaches us about designing for the public realm.

“It was recognised from the outset as a long-life product,” Laws recalled.

“It solves the needs of its time, which haven’t changed. It’s very self-evident how to use it…you don’t have to explain it to anybody.”

A button built for anything

From the beginning, the brief was directly answering a societal need. The new assembly had to comply with the then-recent Australian Standard 2353, remove maintenance-heavy instruction plates and ‘wait’ lights, and integrate audio-tactile accessibility.

It had to survive weather, grime and human impatience. The target was a minimum of 10 million operations before failure.

Form followed function and familiarity. The housing geometry echoes the traffic signals above it, circular elements set within a rounded rectangle, a subconscious alignment that helps the unit read as part of the signal family. Sharp corners were avoided and the team explored surfaces to resist glue, paint and the general impact of the street.

The interface is deliberately simple. A large round button sits beneath a tactile arrow, so the hand never obscures the direction of travel. Consultation with blind users refined the arrow’s tactile spec into one sharp point, small enough to sit between two fingers.

Original drawing of PB/5 Pedestrian Button. Image: Supplied

Engineering the ‘feel’

The PB/5’s signature feel is not an accident. Research into long-life switches led the team to a reed switch, actuated magnetically rather than by direct physical contact. That decision decoupled user force from the electrical mechanism, protecting it from abuse and wear.

“The switch isn’t a direct contact,” Laws explained.

“It’s magnetic. It doesn’t matter how hard you hit it, that impact doesn’t transfer to the activating part of the button.”

Magnets also provide resistance and return, creating the PB/5’s characteristic ‘collapse’ action and audible click as the button meets the case. That click became an audio cue in its own right.

For many city installations, the PB/5 pairs with an audio-tactile transducer developed with acoustical engineer Louis A. Challis & Associates, a vital aid for people with vision or hearing impairment.

Its tone has slipped into culture too, you can hear that familiar beep in television grabs about road safety and it was even sampled in Billie Eilish’s song, ‘Bad Guy’.

PB/5 Pedestrian Button – mounted on the HUB Multi-Function Pole System designed by 4Design. Image: Good Design Australia

Materials and pre-vandalising

Designing for public infrastructure means designing for no owner.

Nielsen’s ethos, which Carl Nielsen described as ‘pre-vandalising’, was to leave nothing fragile to fail in the field.

The housing is metal die-cast, tough, stable and far harder to drill or cut than plastic. The original button face was solid stainless steel. They later transitioned this material into a cost-reduced thin cap over plastic, which is why some units show dents today, but they keep working. Fasteners are recessed and covers are restrained, allowing the internal components to be accessed and serviced without removing the unit from the pole.

“It has to withstand all reasonable abuse,” Laws said.

“Sun, rain, heat, grime, frustration – and it still needs to look legible and keep working.”

Practicality extends to installation. A rounded back lets the unit seat on poles of varying diameters. The arrow plate can be rotated for horizontal crossings. Critical parts were specified for interchangeability between manufacturers, supporting supply and maintenance over time.

Simple by design, longevity in practice

Simplicity is the PB/5’s greatest strength, and its hardest-won quality.

“It’s really quite a simple design,” Laws reflected.

“That is philosophically hard to do. People are tempted to add extra features that make it unreliable. Here, the balance is right. If it had been the wrong way around, someone would have replaced it.”

By resisting unnecessary styling, the PB/5 never dated. The function stayed constant and the form stayed familiar, aligning with the visual language of traffic signals rather than trends. It feels like part of the street, not something added to it.

So, why is the PB/5 still here, largely unchanged?

“Because it solved the problem properly,” Laws answered.

“It hasn’t dated by style and it hasn’t dated by technology. You could walk up to it today and not know it’s 40-plus years old.”

Longevity is sustainability in action. A product that lasts is a product that avoids the waste stream. It also protects brand reputation as public infrastructure that fails in the field is hard to forgive.

The PB/5’s durability has made it a cultural symbol, a familiar shape you don’t think about until the beep cuts through the street noise and you step off the curb.

PB/5 Pedestrian Button – 2025 Livio Bonollo Award for Longevity. Image: Supplied

Lessons for today’s designers

Laws is clear on what contemporary teams can take from the PB/5.

Get the brief right. Understand user behaviour, including misuse. Specify materials and finishes for the true environment, not the ideal one. Resist unnecessary features. Keep costs sensible, but not at the expense of reliability. And design for service: fasteners, access, interchangeable wear parts.

“Once it’s in the field, nothing destroys reputation faster than failure,” he said.

“Public infrastructure must be robust because nobody owns it. Most people respect it, but the 10% who don’t are too many.”

Identity and impact

For Nielsen Design, the PB/5 has also become a clear way to explain Industrial Design to the public: a tangible, everyday example of how design shapes behaviour, safety and experience.

“It’s actually been good for us,” Laws reflected.

“When someone asks ‘What’s Industrial Design?’, we show them the pedestrian crossing button. Then people get it.”

The PB/5 shows what happens when design is clear, honest and built for the real world. Its die-cast housing and magnetic switch mean you can strike it, lean on it or hit it in a hurry, and it will keep working, year after year, in heat, rain and constant use.

The accessibility features, the tactile arrow, the audio cue and the natural placement of the hand are all part of why it will continue to be effective.

Its form sits comfortably within the streetscape.

And, unbeknownst to us, it has become part of daily life, pressed on the way to school with mates, to work, to dinner with someone you love. A small gesture repeated millions of times. Its sound and silhouette sit somewhere in the back of our mind, something familiar and quietly sharing how we move through the city.

Good Design Australia congratulates and thanks Nielsen Design and the many collaborators behind the PB/5 Pedestrian Button, and acknowledges the original team, including Carl Nielsen and David Wood, for a design that continues to make cities safer, clearer and more human.

A special thank you also to Edward Khoury from Form Designs for initiating this Special Accolade in honour of Professor Elivio Bonollo AM