Ian Callum has an illustrious career in automotive design at Ford, Aston Martin and most famously Jaguar. During his talk he touched on a few of the things that have led him to be so successful over the years. A few things that I took from his presentation are detailed below.
- Keep it simple
Ian drew on experiences with designers like Johnny Ives and explained why keeping the design simple is the way to go. Something I whole-heartedly agree with. He went on to explain that simplicity isn't always making things basic or boring but ordering the chaos of all the ideas you come up with and stripping it all the way back to find the simplest method to complete the task using your idea. I wonder how it is that over the last 30 years people have been finding new ways to make something in its simplest form, surely you can only get so simple?
- Be able to explain your method clearly
Ian talked on an experience with someone from marketing at Jaguar who didn't like or fully understand his reasoning behind why a line was where it was. Realising that saying it was intuitive wasn't enough, he spent some time trying to look deeper and see why he had made that subconscious decision. This is definitely something I will try to take into my own design process or at least be mindful of when it comes to explaining my design choices. I want to improve my ability to explain my ideas concisely and be more mindful as I go through my process.
- Be conscious of the brand culture you are joining or creating
The differences between companies across the world can be massive in terms of language and location of course but the working and design culture can vary a lot too. I think this is something I can take into my group work and definitely is an interesting topic, why are the cultures so different in Volvo compared to Jaguar when they are basically making the same thing. I suppose it comes down to the minor differences that make a brand what it is and being respectful of that is important.
- Making small improvements can add up to a big sustainable change
This was the main sticking point for me in Ians presentation, I took his point of view to be if we make small progress towards sustainability, it's okay to still have a lot of issues and pollutants as small progress will equal big changes in the end. For me, this skews too closely to ignoring the problem of climate change entirely, Ian demonstrated awareness of all the issues with the automotive industry to didn't seem motivated to make any large scale changes. I think as designers we have the responsibility to propose and enact real systemic change by pushing the boundaries of people and what they are willing to sacrifice to save the planet.
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