Jaguar C-X14
Jaguar C-X14 – Image Courtesy Jaguar

More than 15 years ago, an Autoweek article put the odds of being a car designer about the same as making it into the National Football League (the Premier League will work fine if you are not American). As a 21-year-old with no outstanding skills, that was my goal.  Every year, hundreds of design graduates will try, as I have. As my former boss said, “it’s really heartbreaking to see so many graduates with the ‘green circle’ around their profile pictures”.  How did we get to so many designers and so few opportunities?  What can schools do?  And most importantly, what can students do to improve their odds?

The Cost of Mainstream

Back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, my own alma mater in Detroit was called the Center for Creative Studies (CCS).  It was a school so specialized the credits earned there might not even transfer to another similar school, Art Center in California for example: I know because as a student I asked.  All the CCS transportation design graduates (less than 20 a year at the time) had a reasonable shot at employment.  Not long after my graduation and responding to an ever increasing and lucrative demand, CCS rebranded itself as it is known today, the College for Creative Studies.  Think about it. You are parents paying the steep bills. Would you rather send your kid to some obscure glorified trade school or to a fully accredited university? When I taught in France years later, the Institut Supérieur de Design also felt the academic pressure to conform, as did many others. It all came at a cost.  Some of the most foundational classes I ever took in industrial design were classes worth 1.5 credits.  Now, these classes would have to change to three full credits, like at any other university. Those classes lost their focus or worse, disappeared.  CCS exploded in size when it expanded into the massive Taubman Center, the old General Motors research facility.  I taught part-time at CCS for a long time.  My class rosters were getting longer every year and filling up with foreign students. And they came to compete.  In summary, car design gains popularity, goes mainstream and global, foundational classes dwindle and the number of graduates goes up. Not good.

CCS Taubman Center
CCS Taubman Center – Photo Courtesy Dig Downton Detroit

What To Teach

You can talk about artificial intelligence or computer aided graphics all you want.  Learning how to draw is the foundation of any successful industrial design career.  This is never going to change (yes, never).  It is all about sketching and visual communication. Why?  Students must develop an artistic sensitivity to understand design.  It is all about lines, shapes, color, light, shadows, and proportions.  Typing prompt lines or learning 3D CAD is not going to teach you any of this. Drawing is the only way to learn it all.

Schools should seek as much industry exposure as possible, collaborating with automotive design studios and suppliers to give their students real life experience. Industry sponsored projects are crucial because there is an entire car design process to discover. What students must understand is that car design is about solving problems, to understand the brief before proposing a visual solution. The hot sketch on Instagram only shows up when a new car is released.  There is an entire department dedicated to its realization.  Those design careers are very well paid and highly in demand:  clay modellers, hard modellers, sketch modellers, CAS modellers, class A modellers, computational designers, visualization artists, movie makers, color and material designers and of course UX/UI designers.

CCS Models
CCS Models at the 2014 NAIAS – 3D models made watertight by yours truly

The Talent Stack

You might make it as a hot shot designer, but you might not.  The hard part for students is to have an honest understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. You know who the best sketch artist is in your class, and I quickly knew that it was not me. I had no interest in being average, so I had to find something else. You must stand out.  How?  First, if you are particularly good at sketching, consider pushing yourself to learn some 3D modelling or real time visualization.  A student who can sketch has good odds of getting hired.  One who can sketch equally but can model in 3D has the upper hand.  That is the very foundation of your “talent stack”.   Before his precipitous downfall, Scott Adams made a fantastic point.  He was not the best at drawing or writing but he had some business skills.  It all added up to the syndicated comic strip Dilbert.  Imagine you are a color and material designer.  You could add real time visualization, coding, and some artificial intelligence.  That can lead you to some spectacular results.  And he mentioned something near and dear to my heart: “if in doubt, add public speaking to your stack first.” Remember, your ideas are not going to sell themselves.  You are going to put your sketches on the wall, and you will have to eloquently explain yourself.  A lot.

Beating the odds

In the end I did not beat the odds. I gave CCS everything I had. I know I did because I ended up in the hospital twice from overdoing it.  I was always fascinated by computer generated imagery, so it all worked itself out.  So first and most important, if you want to give car design a shot, think about yourself first, in all seriousness. Take it from me, it is not worth risking your health over it. Second, I wish you the best of luck in all sincerity.  It is as wonderful a business as it is tough to crack.  Third, car design is glamorous so students will keep coming in ever increasing numbers. Schools do what they can, but understandably they need tuitions to pay their bills.  You will get a good education at a design school, but regardless of where you go, it will be extremely far from being complete. It will be up to hustle and to complete the gaps in your education yourself. Stay curious and hungry, know that the competition is ruthless, and then create a talent stack unlike any other to stand out.  One of the most successful people in the business gave you one of the best tips of them all: “keep your eyes wide open”.

 

I got out of Birmingham International Train Station and got into the Uber. I closed the door and sank into the seat, shattered. That was the final leg of a rare 4-day whirlwind trip across Europe. I was wondering how many miles I put on this week alone. Then again, after a year on the new job, how many miles did I travel for work anyway? Did I go around the world?  And what did I learn from all these travels in planes, trains and automobiles?   

Planes

Flying has taken me to two vastly different cities this year, two places I never visited before. I am not a musician and I never listen to country music. However, there I was in a honky-tonk in Nashville, away from the cold UK spell in March. A local musician was doing her best rendition of Dolly Parton’s Jolene. It was a perfect mix of warmth, the smell of barbeque spices, a local brew and the southern drawl coming out of the speakers. You even sing along after a while. You can forget about all of that when you get off the plane in Milan. It’s all about design, dah-ling. There already was Andy Warhol pop art at Malpensa Airport. The whole evening with Car Design News got me even more immersed with fashion, car design and circularity. When I got off the subway the next day, the Duomo and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II towered over me. Breath-taking. I love flying (sorry about the carbon footprint) but how else can you get quickly to the places you need to go to? Turns out all the beautiful people love it too and they know where to go. You should have seen the fleet of private jets lined up in a row at Milan’s Linate Airport.

The queen of the sky

Trains

The first time I ever visited Birmingham almost 9 years ago, it was a nightmare to get around by car. I got a ticket for driving in a bus lane by accident. That was a charming souvenir to get in the mail a few weeks later in Michigan. I never drove into the centre of that town ever again. I am a car guy indeed but my appreciation for the railways only got deeper, especially over the last year. Heading down the M42 from the airport, you could see all the new roads and new bridges in preparation for the new HS2 railway. Any quick way to get down to London is welcome in my book, no matter how long that gigantic worksite is going to take.  I am amazed that I did not travel by train more this year because the network in Europe is phenomenal. I can leave Birmingham at 9h00. I can work while I am traveling and be in downtown Paris by 16h00. Of course, just keep an eye on the strikes or the delays here and there. Case and point, I will point to my memorable race to London from Germany

High speed train – Germany

Automobiles

In the end it is always about the cars. All over Europe, I was fortunate to see behind closed doors what our clients can do with our software.  It truly is inspiring. Here are a few other random observations.

·        The Lucid Air is really striking in the metal. I mean, there I was in Tennessee visiting the Acropolis and there it was. Yes, I really enjoyed writing that sentence.

·        The same observation goes for the Rivian Amazon van. Just as the sun was setting it looked futuristic in the desert.

·        In the UK, the garages are just too small. It is not convenient to use them to you know, park a car in it. My Michigan garage was big enough to easily park two cars, a motorcycle, and a barbeque. Then again, some cars will never fit anywhere…

Even if you are well over six feet tall, you can still feel small…

Bottomline

I am fortunate and thankful to work for a company who appreciates and understands the needs of its workforce. In the office or not people get their work done and then some. I really enjoy working from home most of the time. However, there is only so much that can be accomplished via Zoom.  The biggest takeaway from last year is travelling remains one of the best things you can do in life.  First it is great to meet clients face to face, wherever they may be. Second, there is something magical about experiencing life somewhere new, somewhere you have never been, out of your comfort zone. You can feel the neuro-synapses lighting up in your brain. It puts your mind in another dimension. Travel indeed forms the youth (and the seasoned). In case you were wondering I went around the world indeed. Almost 1.5 times to be exact.  And now, off to Frankfurt for the 2023 Automotive Innovation Forum. See you there!

Image Courtesy Autodesk

I was asked this question so many times recently that it warranted a post. There are tons of great software out there you can use to get your creative ideas across. However, there is one big hurdle: production. Whatever software you use for form exploration, you might come to a point where you want to have your design built in real life, for either 3D printing, concept car or production. For speed, accuracy and the creation of production ready data, Alias is hard to beat. The question is: how do I learn? If you are a student, you could get yourself an industrial design degree. You could also get some specialized courses from some trusted partners like Symetri. If you want to do it yourself, you could go ahead and download the learning edition of Alias. Then, keep on reading!

Note: to download the course material below, I used Firefox because Chrome and Edge gave me some issues.

Fundamentals

F1 Interface Fundamentals

F2 Geometry Fundamentals

F3 NURBS Fundamentals

F4 Projecting, Intersecting, and Trimming

F5 Building with Curves & Surface Tools

F6 Aligning & Matching Surfaces & Curves

All this material can be traced back to the OG: Alias Workbench.

Image Courtesy Autodesk
Image Courtesy Autodesk

Don’t miss:

The Golden Rules.

Learn the golden rules about control vertices (i.e. CVs). Everything derives from the proper use of CVs. It is a cascading effect. If your curves are not well drawn, the surfaces derived from them will not look good. It is vital to understand proper CV placement with the golden rules.  

Theory Builders

Once you have a good grasp of CV placement on curves, it is time to move on to surfaces. What the hell is curvature anyway? Read on and find out.

SubD modelling

Linkage Design has a great 8-part course on how to get started with SubDs.

Class A Modelling

The best tutorial I have seen out there is by Adrian Biggins. No wonder he was on my team back in the day.

Image Courtesy Autodesk

In conclusion, as you gathered by the amount of material included, Alias takes time to master.  When people start learning Alias, they want to build a car right away. I was no different. The first car I ever built in Alias under the tutelage of Brian Baker was a car built with the chicklet method. Imagine flattened bread dough that I tried to shape into a vehicle. No, it was not pretty. Take my word for it, take the proper steps. If you do not learn Alias methodically you will not be successful. Crawl, stand then walk first. And when you can finally run in Alias, you will never look back.