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!

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…