PASADENA, Calif. (CBS.MW) -- Numbing traffic. Perilous smog. Raging dependence on cars: All of this makes the Los Angeles area an ideal setting for turning out auto designers.

Geoff Wardle, who is on the transportation-design faculty at the Art Center College of Design, goes so far as to make his students get around the city without cars, no small task in Los Angeles. "It stirs some emotion in them," he said. It's a direct response to the harsh reality familiar to commuters and drivers throughout the world.

Though the school itself is removed from the worst of the gridlock, sitting up in the tranquil hills in the Pasadena area, it is not spared parking problems.

For teachers like Wardle, an understanding of both the pleasures and the perils of the automobile is imperative even if it is at odds with conventional thinking. After all, design favors the bold, and more so in recent years.

Creating more emotional, better-looking vehicles is more important when overall engineering and quality is improving across the board, making that less of a differentiator at the dealership, or on the street.

The most powerful way to stand out is with a great looking or truly distinct vehicle -- even if it is mass-produced.

"It's a golden age right now," said Dutch Mandel, AutoWeek editor and moderator of the magazine's design forum at the Detroit Auto Show. Flexible manufacturing techniques, permitting automakers to build different kinds of vehicles more economically, also is a huge help. "We're seeing a recognition that automakers can't just do 800,000 of the same thing," Mandel said.

And the auto companies know, too, that their designers must come to the fore, weathering live television interviews and taking criticism head on and in person. Ford's chief designer J Mays, for one, makes regular auto-show appearances as the company's front man for the media, often garnering more spotlight time than Chairman Bill Ford Jr.

BMW's Chris Bangle has come to epitomize the brand as much as the propeller-badge itself.

Commensurate with the exposure is responsibility, which is not lost on the trainers of the next generation of designers.

Wardle said students don't all join the program with superb drawing or design skills. That can be taught. So can the nuts and bolts of presentations, more and more important as designers move up the corporate hierarchy.

Just as important is impressing on the students that their work shapes more than just metal.

One of the school's ongoing projects is a Honda-sponsored look at Las Vegas' transportation plans. Involving high-level civic leaders and an array of experts, students from the center are working on helping the fast-growing city expand its transportation infrastructure in a sustainable way.

It's an experience as valuable for the contact with policymakers and executives as it is for a hands-on holistic perspective on fixing bigger problems.

Taking an unconventional tack is something designers have to get used to.

"If you feel comfortable with telling the mayor of Las Vegas how his city needs to be designed so that there's good mobility, then [it's easier] trying to convince [General Motors design executive] Bob Lutz that it needs to be a station wagon rather than a car with big fenders and wheels," Wardle said.

It is passion for the automobile that draws students into the transportation program. Not that everyone is drawing, or using the array of sophisticated design software to draw, the same thing.

"Everyone in here loves cars but in different ways," said student Patrick Moran, in his eighth and final term. His work during an internship with Volvo reflects the personal interpretation of what a brand is, as much as what it can be.

"Design right now is the most important part of car creation," said Jan Trondsen, who is also in his eighth term and was hard at work on a Nissan GT-R concept car. For these students, the concepts, with innovative features and bold lines, are a passport to their first full-time work. At their final show before graduation, they present a handful of designs to show the breadth of their work or depth of expertise.

What they're not drawing much of is trucks. At a time when more than half of the cars sold in the U.S. are trucks, minivans and SUVs, when you look at the intriguing models and alluring sketches, trucks are scarce.

Signing up to work at a big-name automaker is not for everyone, however. Work in a high-end hot-rod tuning shop can be more alluring than joining the corporate world.

Even beyond the traditional sphere, the demand for designers, and their rising profile, would appear to be here to stay.

"I don't think the interest in design is going to go away," said Wardle.

August Cole is spot news editor at CBS.MarketWatch.com in San Francisco.