Note: the information in this article is either publicly available or my own opinion.

Midjourney Rolls Royce Sketch by Matt Swann

Look at your phone. Now imagine a computer that is eighty times slower and about the same multiple bigger. I know what you are thinking: that is one obsolete piece of computing. On May 11th, 1997, that antiquity captured the world’s imagination. IBM’s Deep Blue beat world champion Gary Kasparov at chess. For the first time, computer programming beat human intelligence. And it only went downhill from there. The machines became exponential better. They beat us at increasingly difficult games like Jeopardy (IBM again with Watson) and Go (Google Deep Mind). They even pass bar exams. As I went through my presentation at the first ever online Creacion Forum, the anxiety about A.I. bubbled up to the surface with questions from the audience. Some of them barely got started in their careers and they were nervous: A.I. was coming for them.

FelGAN’s creations are especially useful when pictured at scale.

A few years ago, computer made patterns were the rage all over my LinkedIn feed. Today it is Dall-E, Mid-Journey, or Chat GPT. Trends come and go but A.I. is something different. Siri landed on your phone a dozen years ago. It is sweeping all fields of human endeavours, everything everywhere all at once, just like the movie.  Automotive design is one of its targets. Audi was the first to use A.I. in a design studio context to generate rim ideas with FelGAN. Other A.I. examples include generative design and machine learning. Both disciplines will play a key role in electric vehicles, with definitions given by Wikipedia: 

Generative design is an iterative design process that generates outputs that meet specified constraints to varying degrees. In a second phase, designers can then provide feedback to the generator that explores the feasible region by selecting preferred outputs or changing input parameters for future iterations. Either or both phases can be done by humans or software. You can optimize weight and materials costs with this method.

Generative Design with Fusion – Image Courtesy Autodesk

Machine learning algorithms build a model based on sample data, known as training data, to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to do so. Machines can learn how to make the most aerodynamic shape using this method. After thinking about it, here is my idea (for free, you’re welcome). Feed A.I. a clay scan and a matching 3D Alias model. After a while, it might learn how to build a model without human input and turn it around in minutes.

Where is all this leading to? A.I. is a huge weapon but like any weapon, it needs to be calibrated and aimed properly. In meetings with students this year, they already generate sketch alternatives with A.I. It is out of the box; you might as well embrace it.  Much like today, the use of technology will be on a sliding scale. A design director like Matt Swann can use accessible A.I. like Midjourney with spectacular results.

Midjourney Rolls Royce Sketch by Matt Swann
Midjourney Rolls Royce Sketch by Matt Swann

As you get more technical, people will use it to write scripts, to produce patterns or to automate tasks. As demonstrated by Nick John, modellers will be able to extract basic 3D math from the A.I. sketches to start their 3D models.  As we get more technical other users will optimize weight or aerodynamics. If you want to accelerate design cycles, those activities will need to be concurrent to or integrated with design. I predict a new form of I.T. will be in place within the studio to support all those creative activities. For those young people worried about their jobs, it might generate careers for them that are not even being thought of today. Ten years ago, nobody heard of a “parametric modeller”.

Midjourney to 3D by Nick John

To go back to the chess analogy, there are now championships that allow the use of computers. Computers crunch the possibilities while humans direct strategy: that is the key. You calibrate and aim. The choices and the possibilities are endless. That might lead us to a vastly different conundrum: what if there is too much choice?

Birmingham Library

 

“I would never read a book. (…) I am very sceptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that (…). I think, if you wrote a book, you f***ed up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.”

Sam Bankman Fried – Interviewed by Johnny Diamond

 

To never a read a book??? Finance for Dummies is longer than six paragraphs, but it was the first book recommendation that came to my mind for our friend Sam Bankman Fried. The former crypto wunderkind known as SBF is in seriously hot water these days. I am not an avid reader myself for a simple reason: I am surprisingly slow at reading. Therefore, I find it a lot easier to fit audiobooks in my schedule. The school run is one of my favorite times to catch up. I listened to a lot of books last year and fear not SBF, here are a few about business that you would have found highly entertaining. I even condensed the key takeaways for you. Enjoy!

Boundless – Nick Kostov & Sean McLain

His childhood is a surreal path through the Brazilian jungle, Lebanon, and France. He started his career with Michelin before becoming the globe-trotting, cost slashing CEO of both Nissan and Renault. Carlos Ghosn was larger than life in the automotive world. He was so famous he had his own manga comic book in Japan and a stamp in Lebanon. After a while, it seems Ghosn believed his own press, especially with a ridiculously lavish birthday party in Versailles. His head did not roll in France but he was arrested in Tokyo right off the private jet. Four charges were levelled against him, including one accusing him of hiding more than $85 million in compensation. He might end up more famous with his escape in a music box from Japan than his business career.  In Lebanon, he is a free man continuing to plead his innocence, but he is still a wanted man in Japan, and more recently France. The authors do not make claims about his guilt or innocence, but the depths of their investigation certainly raise a lot of red flags: the yacht in his wife’s name, the LLC in the Netherlands that paid him off the books, and the flow of money from a Nissan distributor in Omman. The SBF takeaway is that as a business leader you must know how to count. Carlos Ghosn knew how to count, maybe a little too well.

The Missing Crypto Queen – Jamie Bartlett

This was a cocktail for the ages. The main ingredient was a charismatic and pedigreed female founder, Doctor Ruja Ignatova. Add the best multi-level marketers in the world. Combine the technology du jour, cryptocurrency, and finally the masses’ fear of missing out on the next BitCoin. OneCoin was supposed to revolutionize finance and to make cryptocurrency accessible to all, according to Doctor Ruja anyway. When Ruja promised to double the coins in people’s accounts, people cheered. They never stopped and thought it was impossible. Isn’t the number of coins you can mine a fixed quantity (you know, Crypto 101)? Jamie Bartlett hosted a fantastic podcast about Doctor Ruja as he chronicles her modest upbringing in Bucharest before becoming a world wide celebrity. The SBF takeaway is that yes, you can successfully run a crypto market exchange. Unfortunately, it is the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. You will be forced to disappear because you are at the top of the FBI’s most wanted list.

 

Billion Dollar Loser:

The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork – Reeves Wiedeman

 Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber – Mike Isaac

To spare SBF too much reading, we will lump those two books together about Adam Neumann (We Work) and Travis Kalanick (Uber). First, they shared the vaunted status of “founder”. They started their companies from scratch and turned them into unicorns, the adored Silicon Valley term when a start-up’s valuation passes one billion dollars. Up until the 2016 US election, a tech founder was worshipped and could do no wrong.  Most important, they even shared the same benefactor, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. Son was among a group of venture capitalist firms that poured an obscene amount of money into both companies. With no shareholders to answer to and a freedom to spend and expand at will without oversight, We Work and Uber used their billions to “blitz scale”, to bury their competitors, or anyone or anyhing standing in their way.  Both men were comfortable pushing ethical boundaries. Kalanick deceived authorities worldwide using Greyball. Neumann milked WeWork starting with $80 million of real estate, after he sold WeWork stock, something most founders or Kalanick never did to his credit. Unfortunately, both personified everything the public despised.  Neumann was notorious for doing tequila shots with his subordinates in the office. Kalanick called Uber “Buber” because his newfound fame made it a lot easier for him to meet women. The SBF takeaway is that you can behave like the worst “white men tech bros” in the world and still make a legal and insane amount of money, three commas worth.  The downside is that some people will really hate your guts.

But at least you won’t go to jail…

Ronni Ancona, the Skoda Light Design Team, some lucky guy, James McLachlan – Photo Courtesy Car Design News

“Woke up in London yesterday
Found myself in the city, near Picadilly
Don’t really know how I got here
I got some pictures on my phone”
One Republic – Good life

 

The music comes to a stop, and I hear my name, pronounced with great Italian flair.  That is my cue to walk on stage.  I can hear my heart beating in my chest. I am not even looking in the crowd.  If I did, I would realize that at this very moment, the eyes of the entire car design were on me.  As seen in countless award shows, I softly announce “and the award goes to”. After seeing enough award shows go wrong, I made sure with our host James McLachlan that I had the correct name on the envelope.  Six hours earlier, I was sweating over the major train delay that might keep me stuck in Germany. Yet somehow, there I was on stage in London at the Car Design News People Awards.  After a few laughs in the audience, I announce the winner for Best Exterior Lighting Team sponsored by Autodesk, Skoda.  Cue the claps, the handshakes, the award handover, the accolades, the pictures.  I casually walk off stage, smile and marvel at this one fact: “how did THAT happen?” It boils down to three things: ask, observe and be there.

Ask

If you want something, did you ever think that the best way to get it is to simply ask?  Let us travel in time to illustrate.  The French have an incredibly special sentence when you go down in flames asking a girl out: “tu t’es pris un rateau”.  You got yourself a rake.  In the head or in the gut? Unlike you are Bruce Willis, no one knows. Either way, it hurts (emotionally speaking).  As a young teen, I was a jedi gardener.  Like many teenage boys, it was a horror show trying to get acquainted with the opposite sex.  This rite of passage was an ugly spectacle, cringe worthy, sad, and everything else in between. Today I look back with zero regrets. At least I asked.  Fantastically enough, there have been some wonderful times when I did go out with the girl, and it was magical. I even asked a beautiful woman on a dare once (ask my wife about that).  Back to more recent times, I was travelling round trip from Birmingham to Germany to meet some clients.  I learned that Autodesk was going to have a table at the event.  I simply asked my boss if I could change my travel plans to attend and he said yes.  That is all it took.  Here is a first tip for you.  You will never really know unless you ask.

Want a selfie with a very gracious legend? Just ask.

Observe

For the last six years I have trained as a public speaker with Toastmasters, and I could not believe my luck.  I was going to get a free professional level lesson from a 2-time BAFTA winning actress and comedian no less! Ronni Ancona was the MC of the evening, and she was on fire, right from her intro monologue. In my mind, I put myself back at one of our Toastmasters meetings, as I was dissecting and analyzing her speech. She was funny, brilliant, coordinated with the current news events, and with the perfect dose of edge (ask Patrick Le Quément). Preparing your speech is half the battle. You could tell she researched her audience. She caught on early that the designer population was a very well dressed and flamboyant bunch.  I would like to thank her for pointing out Pontus Fontaeus’ shoes (they were glorious, you just had to be there).  Her quip about black turtlenecks was a line that kept on giving.  Her auto-scroll notes were not working but as a seasoned pro she carried on with the evening without missing a beat until it got fixed.  Sit back and listen. That is all I had to do to enjoy this public speaking masterpiece by a pro. Here is a second tip. Observe. There is awesome stuff that constantly unfolds before your very eyes.

Be There

“That’s why we line up on Sunday”.  Those are the immortal words of the late MotoGP champion Nicky Hayden.  Anything can happen in a race, said the beloved American.  All that is required of you is to get out of the house and show up.  And that is the third piece of advice: just be there.  When I was stressing out about being a decent father, my wife said that the most important thing was to be there every day for the little things. She was right.  When I interviewed for my last manager job, I only found out later that my odds of getting the job were long.  I was only the third choice for the position.  For several reasons, both candidates ahead of me dropped out. I showed up and the job was mine.  That night in London, I just wanted to enjoy the evening and to reconnect with some old friends.  My co-worker Phil was supposed to hand out the award.  He and I were texting each other all day as we raced to get to London.  My train in Germany was delayed but I miraculously still made my flight. Racing from Heathrow in the London underground, I got to the event when dinner started.  Phil got stuck in Manchester because of the strikes. If we go by what Ronni said in her speech, he got the full British experience. And just like that, I was asked to hand over the award.

How do you make your life better?  There is no shortage of advice out there.  You can find gurus to help you.  They will flip your life upside down.  They will transform you (and it will cost you).  The self-help market size will go north of ten billion dollars in the next few years.  If I learned anything in life, tremendous changes in our lives do not have the biggest or longest lasting impact. How many people assault the gym in January only to end up back on the couch in February? It is the cumulation of tiny steps that add up to transformational changes.  Eat one less cookie.  Skip a drink one night of the week. Walk one more block with the dog.  Be grateful, one more minute.  Ask.  Observe.  Show up.  Those are my three free pieces of advice for you.  You will be amazed how much richer life can be.

Porsche Mission R Interior

The controls clip in above my knees. The door shuts. All the noise around me vanishes. I am in a cockpit all right. I am guessing you drive the thing but if you look around, the environment screams X-Wing (yes, I am mixing my movie references). Where am I? This is still Earth, a hotel lobby of all places. At the Munich Airport Hilton, the time is still May 2022 in the Gregorian calendar. Welcome to the annual Automotive Innovation Forum (AIF) hosted by Autodesk. In between demos and presentations, I was able to slide inside the cockpit of the Porsche Mission R. My inner geek is in heaven. For all my career I used to build and visualise cars with some fancy software. This time, I embarked into a vastly different journey. I was going to assist customers on how to better build and better visualize their vehicles (with said fancy software). I was going behind the curtains to see what happens when you start working for a software company. It has been more than 90 days, but it is my first impression all the same. Buckle up for my first 90 days on the new job, unlike any other before.

The Machine

Fast forward to New Orleans. I am now attending Autodesk University in late September. About 9,000 people were on attendance. The main stage looked more like a rock concert than a software convention. This is when you appreciate on a visceral level how much horsepower is behind Autodesk. “So… Let me just download the latest software, I will be on my way”, or so I thought. Well not so fast. To onboard the machine, you must take it slowly. There is a lot of horsepower for sure and all the cogs of the machine are scattered around the world. Your Spanish and Irish teammates are in Germany. The development team is in North America. Don’t forget to reach out to some of the customer success managers in Spain or France. And of course, keep your manager in Belgium informed. For the rest, you can sort yourself out, for your travels or your IT equipment. It is a culture of self-service, but you never feel abandoned. You can use Teams, Slack, the Intranet. There is a wealth of information out there for you to address any issues you might have. For example, I was having issues with my new work phone, so I raised a ticket. Messages started to ping on Slack. A tech guy in San Francisco called me directly. Now that is a well-oiled machine. 

The Crew

When I started, my boss flew in from Belgium to the United Kingdom. My co-worker simply drove up. We all met in the Birmingham offices. The next time I saw them in person, it was in Munich at the AIF. A few weeks later, our team met in London.  A few weeks after that, we were with the entire department in Barcelona. From home, from the office, on site, people assemble and meet as needed. Imagine you are the new guy, and you are trying to figure out who you need to talk to about an extremely specific issue. Let’s say I need to demonstrate the latest feature in the latest software. This is a microscopic part of a huge ecosystem. You have technical account managers and customer success managers for the clients.  You have technical product managers for the business and the technology. Finally, developers and programmers handle the software itself as well as a lot of the support. Keep in mind that some of those individuals worked from home already before the pandemic. They are scattered in offices and homes all over Western Europe and the Americas over ten time zones. And all of them need to be aligned to deliver the best software experience to the customers. And without missing a beat, the work gets done. The entire orchestration is a remarkable sight.

The Care

In the past, I took my career development into my own hands. I would surf the Intranet looking for career resources and I would poke around at random. In one lucky instance, I finally generated a skills profile for myself. Unfortunately, that was years into the job already. Another time, there was leftover budget and it had to be spent. Here, it is a completely different story. I was encouraged to find a mentor right when I started. I was told I could become one as well down the line if I chose to. Within a few weeks I was getting emails about booking a coaching session. Within my first 90 days, I already had a work profile and one coaching session under my belt. The most striking aspect of my new position is the culture around its people. It is something that was given careful thought and consideration. There is genuine care about the people. Every person I met, from colleagues all the way to vice-presidents, have been very approachable, personable, and welcoming.

Look at the smile on the kid’s face…

Conclusion

Ah Autodesk, we have been looking at each other for a long time. My first interview with that company was in Toronto in the previous millennium. And now, here we are. I described myself like a kid in a candy store when I started, and it is pretty accurate. It is easy for a nerd like me to stare at the toys and the galaxy of products in the Autodesk universe. Yet it is the culture of the company around its people that really struck me. Of course, the perks of the position are pretty cool. I gaze around the cockpit in total awe. I have the face of a 5-year-old who sits behind the wheel of a car for the first time. A minute or two later, I somehow get out of the very snug seat. That was cool all right, but it is nothing in comparison that what I could see behind closed doors… Our clients use our software in ways I did not know what possible or imaginable. Put it this way: my inner geek has not stopped being tickled. Cue the 5-year-old smile.

 

Ford F150 Lightning
Ford F150 Lightning

 

Did I channel my inner Jeremy Clarkson a little too much? This question will frame it better:

 

“Think of an American company with billions of dollars in revenues.  Coca Cola, Nike, McDonald’s, Visa.  Do you know what is bigger than any of those?”

 

On May 19th, 2021, that was the question asked by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.  The show bearing her name is one of the highest rated news shows in the USA.  Her lead story is usually the big deal of the day in America, mostly about politics.  Surprisingly, the answer was completely non-political.  It is not another company but a truck: the Ford F-Series pickup truck.  Peter DeLorenzo, a.k.a. The Auto Extremist adequately named it The Franchise.  The next day, Ford was going to reveal the F-150 Lightning, the electric version of the best-selling pickup truck in the USA for four decades.  You can watch the news segment here.  Two things are happening.  First, the entire industry is shifting to electricity.  Second, this is creating a huge opportunity for the usual competitors and new start-ups to grab some of those dollars.  From lifestyle to utility, from out of this world design to conservative, there is a huge design bandwidth in the upcoming electric pick up wars.

 

The usual suspects

Ford’s cross-town rivals are not resting on their laurels.  Both Stellantis and GM have announced electrified versions of their trucks.  Ram has teased an image of its Revolution, a rather futuristic looking truck.  However, you will have to wait until 2024.  It is also working on a mid-size truck.  GM has cornered the high-end market.  Rising from the ashes, Hummer is ditching its gas guzzling image for a state-of-the-art electric GMC sub brand.  With all the bells and whistles, the EV truck will have 1000hp, Ultium batteries, “crab mode” and a UX powered by Unreal Engine.  The more mainstream electric 2023 Chevrolet Silverado was unveiled at CES .  It even channeled a famous television series for the Super Bowl…

 

Chevrolet Silverado EV
Chevrolet Silverado EV

If finding a charging station worries you, you will probably want to wait for the Tesla Cybertruck.  If you need the most capable truck with the most mainstream design, it is not the truck for you.  Plenty of ink has already been spilled about the Cybertruck (and lately it has been about its giant wiper).  To its credit it has pushed the boundaries of design to an absolute “low poly” extreme.  Elon Musk has just delayed production until late 2022 because of the global chip shortage.  There is a good chance you will not see any on the road until 2023 or later.

 

The rest of the field

A few years ago, some Faraday Future employees left to form a new start-up called Evelozcity before changing to its new name in 2019, Canoo.  With its cab forward look, the Canoo truck has optimized its electric platform and is thoughtfully executed in every way, like a Swiss army knife.  Canoo broke off the discussions with Hyundai to have its cars built.  However, its cars should roll off the assembly line in a new plant in Oklahoma in 2023.  Other lesser-known start-ups will come after the F-150 such as Lordstown, Bollinger or Atlis.  Lordstown just agreed to build Fisker cars at its plants.  There is no word about its own pickup truck.  Atlis has a camouflaged truck on its Twitter account, a heavy-duty pickup truck, good for 500 miles and a 15-minute recharge time.  The equally utilitarian looking Bollinger is aiming for real heavy-duty work.  At this point each one of them must roll down the assembly line to assess their real viability.

 

 

Canoo Pickup Truck
Canoo Pickup Truck

The real contender

If you want a historic date in automotive history, you will probably want to mark down September 15th, 2021.  The first all-electric Rivian R1T pickup rolled out of the old Mitsubishi plant in Normal, Illinois.  After coming out of “stealth mode” at the 2018 Los Angeles Auto Show, Rivian beat everyone else to the production line.  It is one of the most serious challengers to Ford and ironically with investment from Ford itself (and some guy named Jeff Bezos).  The R1T is a little smaller than an F-150 yet very capable.  It will go over 300 miles on a charge, it is very well designed and cleverly positioned in the market for well-heeled outdoor fans.  Charging stations will be available at parks and other recreational spots.  The first reviews are coming in and they are glowing.  The R1T is the real deal and perhaps already a favourite to win the electric pickup wars.

 

RJ Scaringe with the 1st R1T
RJ Scaringe with the 1st R1T

Final thoughts

There are challengers coming for Ford but let’s be clear: the Blue Oval has its franchise, and it is building a moat around it.  Ford just announced three battery factories and a truck plant creating 11000 jobs.  EV and ICE versions of the F-Series share a most common design.  Ford left a traditional whip antenna so you could catch AM radio signals in rural America.  All accessories fit across the entire range.  The pricing has been kept close between versions.  How is it going so far?  Ford stopped taking reservations as three years of production capacity are already spoken for.  How big of a deal is this car?  Let Maddow close the segment in eye popping terms:

 

“The revenue from the F-Series is more than 42 billion dollars.  Nothing else in America comes anywhere close.  It has been that way for decades.  If Ford can transition the F-Series to an electric vehicle, it’s good-bye gas cars in America.”

 

 

 

This is Part 2 of the 2021 ISD Rubika Degree show review.  Don’t miss Part 1!

Today, I talk with Swarnim Verma on the Heart of England Speakers podcast. She discusses her upbringing in India and Dubai. She then details her journey to becoming a digital artist that took her all the way to France at ISD Rubika in Valenciennes (France). To earn her diploma, Swarnim and her peers had to give a 35-minute speech in English in front of a jury of five industry professional. That is one third of their final grade.

The cartoonist Scott Adams has coined the term “the talent stack”. He is average at writing, drawing and business. However, when you combined those skills, you get the multi-million comic strip franchise Dilbert. Swarnim combined her skills, her talents, her eye for colour and her software knowledge in clothing and texturing into a game changing weapon.

 

Conceptual CMF by Swarnim Verma

 

Her way is unique in approaching CMF (colour, material, and finish).  Her experiments are named “conceptual CMF”. Traditionally, CMF designers collect physical fabric and material samples to create their mood boards. Swarnim’s moods board are full CGI. CG fabrics tend to be stiff. Hers were flowing and photorealistic, not to mention with some dazzling colour combinations. A detailed look at her workflow can be found in an article she wrote for Adobe Substance.

The digital design graduating class had three women for a total of 14 students. The gender split was comparable to the previous classes I saw graduate. It was inevitable that at some point, a woman was going to take first place overall in the year end jury. That was not the surprising part. The real surprise was how it happened. Over the years, the winners were in some predictable categories. They were hard core car guys. Then they were wizards at visualization for cars or for watches (or clothing soon, probably). Swarnim Verma is none of those. Here is the best advice for students who want to single themselves out and who aspire for greatness: be yourself. It worked for her.

 

 

 

 

Audi R8 - full CGI by Fabien Vandemortelle

 

This is Part 1 of the 2021 ISD Rubika Degree show review.  Don’t miss Part 2!

Do you remember the last time you took a plane? It had been over two years for me, so I was giddy at the idea of taking to the skies again. It was time for my yearly trip to the north of France to judge the digital design graduating class at the Rubika Institut Supérieur de Design in Valenciennes (ISD). This was another marker in time for me. 20 years ago, I came to Valenciennes to become one of ISD’s first 3D teachers. The day before, the entire family gathered to take a now ritual lateral flow test. I don’t remember how many we have gone through all this time. All tests turn up negative until I see one test with the dreaded two lines. And it did not take long either. Goodbye flight. Goodbye weekend in Paris with one of my best friends. Ugh. Thankfully ISD was prepared so I was able to participate in the jury remotely.

 The Usual Suspects. Expanded.

Every year, it was customary to run into one type of student: the car guy / girl. There was no doubt what that student wanted to do out of school. It was cars and that was it. Saurav Ponkshe created one of the most detailed Porsche 911 models you will ever see. It not only had the exterior but also an interior and a fully articulated roof (too bad it is not in full details on his online portfolio).

Saurav Ponkshe's 911

Over the years the students’ tastes have evolved and there are now two other types: watches and clothing. For watches, there are so many to choose from. For clothing, those of us who are a little older need to take notice on how to promote yourself online. Thomas Radenne created an online fashion show on social media in the middle of the pandemic. Of course, he tagged the people he wanted to reach in his post, and they did reply. It is a brave new world.

Saurav Ponkshe's 911

The Visualization Wizards

Fabien Vandemoortele had some great images. His Audi won the best student image in the Domeble Symetri contest (Corona Render) but I really liked the Fairlady Z (3DS Max / Corona).

Fairlady Z by Fabien Vandemoortele

Nirmal Tudu used Blender to showcase his 911 Singer. Last year, Valentin Becart showcased what the future of visualization was going to be with Unreal Engine. If this year needed any confirmation, he is going to have some company. The population of students using Unreal is rising and it is bound to become more popular in design studios around the world. Saurav Ponshke had a nice visualization of his Porsche in a pre-made Unreal environment. It is a great step to understand how to import data within a readymade scene. Praveen Balaji went way further as he created an entire tropical forest environment from scratch. In it, he dropped a Mercedes 4×4 and the entire visual was a showstopper. 

Praveen Balaji's Mercedes 4x4 in Unreal

The Future

At every jury, a student comes along and lights up the presentation room. This year it was Swarnim Verma. Her bubbly personality was on full display. She was prepared, smiling, engaged and confident. Her presentation and public speaking skills were impeccable. I am a trained public speaker and I am telling you this: she made a 40-minute speech look easy (and even highlighted her newfound fluency in French). She took the jury from her humble beginnings as a digital artist to where she is today. Teachers found out early that she had an eye for color. Swarnim coupled that talent with software use to dazzling effect. What did we witness? It is the future of CMF (color, material, and finish). In Part 2, we will have a much longer and in-depth conversation with Swarnim.

Praveen Balaji's Mercedes 4x4 in Unreal

 Conclusion

Like clockwork, I look forward to seeing what the ISD students have done. It never disappoints. Think about the technologies used by the students during the time I have fortunate enough to be on the jury: Blender, Marvelous, Unreal, and now Substance. All those programs were known in the industry, but some students have created fantastic case studies for their use in automotive design. This year, on top of it all, the winner’s presentation was unexpected, brilliant, and ground-breaking. It felt like a breath of fresh air. As long as this fresh breeze blows from the north of France into the automotive design world, I suspect people in the industry, and I, will keep coming back to inhale it.

Brian Baker

Sedans (or saloons) have always played a part in automotive design.  They are a practical and dependable vehicle format.  But where did the sedan come from?  What is its history?  And is there any life left in the future?  To answer these questions (and more) I invited my longtime friend Brian Baker, VP of Education and Principal historian at the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn, Michigan, on the FORMCAST podcast.  Hope you enjoy the episode here!

ISD Rubika 2020

Google, Toyota, Louis Vuitton and Tata Motors walk into a digital room.  Welcome to the ISD degree juries.  Every year the French school Institut Supérieur de Design holds its year end degree show.  It  is arguably the best place for OEMs to recruit digital artists and 3D modellers.  The main school is in the north of France with a sister school in India.  Each student must present their work to industry professionals and in English.  This presentation counts for 30% of their final grade.  The added difficulty this year is a completely remote jury.  The real world awaits.  Well students?  It has been five years and it all comes down to this.  Did you earn your digital design manager degree or not?  It was time to find out. 

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NAIC at Night

To say that 2020 has been a bad year would be an understatement of epic proportions.  But hang in there everyone, we are more than two thirds of the way through this year and there are promising utterances of a vaccine on the way.  Still, this year will arguably go down as the single most memorable year in human history.  A world war was certainly terrible but thankfully it really was only fought in a few countries.  Covid-19 affected every single sector of human activity in every country, and that also includes cars.  It will shape the car industry for years to come.  It affected the product line, the design of cars, shared mobility and society overall.

The Product Line 

As human activity started to shut down in March, everyone felt the cash crunch.  Car sales around the world grinded to a halt.  Want an eye-popping statistic?  The 1.4 billion people in India bought a staggering zero vehicles in April 2020.  If your business case for a vehicle line was not strong before, COVID19 was probably the final blow.  Nobody is immune to this new reality.  Volkswagen has been on a tear to turn around its green credentials.  Prepare yourself for an onslaught of green ID vehicles of all sizes.  With Dieselgate and the COVID related cash crunch, VW is taking a long look at its luxurious (and polluting) portfolio.  The wildest rumour is that Rimac will take over its crown jewel Bugatti.  And nobody else in the VW empire is safe. 

Design Goes On 

Just recently General Motors issued an official statement: its staff will stay home until June 2021.  That certainly does not mean that design work stops.  And that has been true for all of the design studios around the world.  Sure, there has been contraction and furloughs worldwide, but the work has continued.  Automotive design has always been at the cutting edge of technology.  Why?  It costs billions to put a car on the road.  By investing heavily in technology, you maximize the chances of getting your product right.  Those technological investments certainly paid off.  With design studios all around the world, OEMs have long mastered conference calls, secure review rooms for 3D CAD reviews and virtual reality tools.  

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