In a few words I´d say "style" is the cosmetical interpretation of the individual for a corporative desired direction.(..) for fulfilling mainly emotional aspects of the end user .

Dear Dr. Baha,

Styling is also uttering {(self)expression} of believes and purposeful communication of meanings. Both can be approached from the side of information technology and creative art. In theory, these can be demarcated from each other, in practice, it is difficult and perhaps makes no sense. We must therefore be careful with (syntactic) formalization.

Kind regards,

Imre Horvath

Ehsan, Jelle says it very well.  I can add only a personal anecdote.  When I was a design student I was fully intent on becoming an automotive designer.  When I entered the Industrial Design program at Rhode Island School of Design, I was immediately dissuaded from this pursuit as automotive design at the time (mid 1960"s) was considered "styling" (lower case "s") and not "Design"(upper case "D").

The rationale at the time was that cars were not really being redesigned each year but merely covered by a new skin that was simply a reflection of the evolving fashion of the time;  styling was a very pejorative term.  By the time I graduated five years later the ID department was sending students to internships in Detroit.

Obviously, things change.  In todays eternally "Style" conscious world, I think that the distinction between the two terms remains but that styling has been elevated to upper case status.  

The fact remains that it is in the skin and/or appearance of a product that the "style" fundamentally resides and the "design" of a product lies in its manufacture, functionality and use. While "style" has taken an ever increasing role in the "design" process, especially in marketing, there lingers an underlying resentment of it among "Design" purists.  See some of the discussion on this topic in recent posts on Dezeen.com.

Best of luck with your research, I hope I was of some help,

Peter Thibeault

As a mechanical designer our goal is to make a product work in as simple a form as possible within the economics of money and time.  Does the product sell in its simple form? Yes or No? If the answer is no will styling help?  Can the designer add styling to make the product sellable?  Some can and some cannot.  If a designer cannot then inside or outside styling or industrial designers are employed to make the product sellable.  Should styling and/or industrial design be included in mechanical design courses?  I say yes!  

Dear Ehsan (if I may),

I would like to encourage you to go on with seeking for a synergic approach. This is how the problem you sketched up pops up in real life. Obviously, it means that we have to leave behind the traditional (otherwise) popular philosophical stance of reductionism, and to go into the unknown (but more promising) arena of holism. Anyway, I should say, some 15 years ago, we were able to go in this direction by adopting the metaphore of information commmuinication in the context of product aesthetics. You can find two papers on RG on the results. In terms of formalization, I personally prefer uncertain, but permissive, approaches compared with 'certain', but constraining, approaches. Wishing you all the best,

Imre

Most of the previous contributions have already outlined the basic challenges, so allow me to limit myself to fill some of the blanks. It is certainly true that styling at one point was identified with the car industry. Due to it's particular marketing system (a product/model only lasts for one year and is subsequently taken off the market) the design project seems more superficial as in other sectors. In reality it has shown to be a very effective way of making the users expectations evolve. As a result of it cars interiors and exteriors are way ahead of for instance homes and home interiors. We can question the orientation in which this evolution has been directed but it is difficult to question it's effectiveness. Most people are more comfortable  in their cars than in their homes. They access more information, better sound systems and better temperature control, just to name a few. Unlike many other product groups the car industry has developed a recognizable  and rather uniform form language, based on a number of considerations divided between use ( aerodynamics, sound control, air intake, safety) and its symbolic equivalent. the question arises wether the result of these marketing/tactical considerations should be considered so different from any other "style". Of course the appropriate  "style" for a power tool is different from a computer ( to compare Jonathan Ive's power tool proposals during his tangerine time with his work for Apple might be a good illustration of that difference ) but Dieter Rams' designs for Braun are a "style" in the same sense as Raymond Loewy's work was. Braun had no intention of selling out all the years models at the end of the year and come up with slightly improved models for the next, and Dieter Rams responded to that "design brief" with adequate designs in a more "timeless" style. I must say that I am always uncomfortable with the term design language. It implies that there is some communication and as Prof. Jacques Giard pointed out at the conference dedicated to semantics in Helsinki (some years ago) there is no communication if the message that is send is not the same as the messaged that is received. In form language we seem to be very far from achieving that. So my direct answer to your initial question would be that it certainly is not a language. If it is an art, it is an art that has evolved at very different speeds in different product areas, and strangely enough it has evolved fastest by making many small steps, and slowest in those areas where designers wanted to take long "timeless" steps. Good luck with your study!  

Your colleagues have already been very eloquent, and for the most part, I agree with many of their views. I'd only add an observation: both "language" and "art" are terms with a history; and any precision an answer may have stems from the way you understand those two terms. For instance, in semiotics, we've learned to be extra careful with the use of the word "language". Many authors have used the word to define significant aspects of many things, from films and fashion to products and music. From a technical perspective, it wouldn't be enough to say that something is conventional or presents some symbolic meaningful aspects, for it to be considered a language, because, for instance, language is a very formal system with a clear set of rules and units (phonemes, morphemes and so on), but many things considered as languages don't share with it those two basic features. In that respect, visual arts and design can be referred to as languages only rethorically, on the condition that you don't do a fine grain reading of the term. And the same thing applies to "art" and "style".

Incidentally, such views of language determine meaning rather independently of it's users, and they gave birth to theories of art where meaning is mostly "disembodied", whereas most contemporary theories of interaction tend to be more "embodied" and rely heavily on user's perceptual, emotional and cognitive activity.

For thet reason, If you're considering a formal approach to style on different grounds than those of traditional theories, I'd suggest you check Argamon, Burns  and Dobnov's (eds.) "The Structure of Style" (2010), and particularly Jupp and Gero's chapter on Design. You'll get an approach to art and style more in tune with contemporary theories, although you'll have to sacrifice the more conventional aspects of these.

I find most of the comments intriguing and confusing. Style is an interpretation of reality, it is symbolic and personal or 

I think the fenomenological approach only dictates if you are asking the right question and if this is valid for further questioning and experimentation. Yes, I agree that uniqueness is one big clue of approaching to this question. However, is this the right question? One thing is that you define art and language  and if you want to categorize that, it´s just fine, so you could find out if style is in the same level of art and language, as social sciences (which is not the case). Style is not art nor a language... just because they are not in the same category. Style can be more interpreted as a unique expression (if you are the one who creates that way of expressing something and nobody else copies it) in the same way i prefer to respond to a question as a YES or NO but I want to do it in my one and unique personal way as YEEEP, or NOOT. In this example I am only expressing myself in a certain manner that everyone can recognize my answer without a doubt and at the same time I do it so people recognize  me through my answer without looking for my name.

Again, from a fenomenological point of view I think it is not the right question to ask because it could lead us to phantomize knowledge thus our perception of reality.