The livery of a Formula 1 car is more than just a fanciful design exercise – it plays an integral role in shaping a team's brand image. Not only do the colours figure prominently on all team kit, garage cladding, transporter paint schemes and marketing materials, but the design of the livery also sets the tone for the team's entire identity.

Midland F1 Product Designer Rob Taylor, the man responsible for creating and continually modifying the dynamic red, white and grey livery that appears on the M16 race cars, joined the team in early 2005 and immediately began working on a conceptual design that would accentuate the lines of the all-new M16 race car.

Although it was officially unveiled to the world at the February 2006 launch, Midland F1 Racing actually introduced its livery late in November 2005, at a meeting with the team's sponsors.

Since its first public appearance at Silverstone Circuit that frosty afternoon, the widely-acclaimed colour scheme has undergone several modifications to optimise both its aesthetic appeal and sponsor logo visibility – two important considerations for any successful livery design.

"A good starting point for designing any livery is really to do some market research," explains Taylor. "Take a look at the competition, not just in F1, but other sports too: motorcycle racing, yacht racing – anything, really. The things you're looking out for are lines, colours and shapes that work; a livery that really sells the brand image of a team and something that remains memorable."

When Midland F1 Racing took over Jordan Grand Prix, a team with one of the strongest brand images in the sport, it was vital for Midland to firmly establish a completely new identity in order to move forward with its plan for the future.

"With a new team, this last point is especially important, as one of your main objectives is to make your product instantly familiar to your new market," he says.

To realise this vision, Taylor used cutting-edge technology to design, manipulate and view the livery choices that he came up with.

"I actually wanted to try and tackle the project in a slightly different way. You see, most teams produce their livery initially working in two dimensions: they produce side and plan elevations of the car, and try to project how the paint scheme will look when viewed from each of those angles.

"Often, they will then move on to a scale model or a real car to see how that paint scheme translates into reality. This is how we worked on our very original concept livery. But it's really the step to working in 3-D that is most important, as this is the primary proving ground to see how the design works from all angles.

"The 2-D and scale model route is thought to be a reliable and logical way of working, but I found it tended to cause more problems than it solved. Applying various solutions to a scale model is a lengthy process, and unless you have several scale models to work with there is no way to compare ideas. Also, working on a scale model is never truly accurate, and even working on a full-scale car makes it hard to see the paint scheme in its entirety and from all the necessary distances and angles. When you consider that a full-scale paint scheme can cost well into four figures, to have few guarantees it will work from all angles is not satisfactory.