Design interview: Samuel Chuffart, Icona

A couple of years ago, I was very scared about the future of cars. Since the iPhone, phone design has been reduced to the camera and colour; it’s all about the apps. Cars are going the same way, it’s all about what’s in the screen. Cars will become more of a commodity, and you will barely notice the shape – it’s quite a scary thought. We risk losing the love of cars, something I was born with. That made me want to create something that was relevant for the future, which answers all the right questions.

The cleverest car you can design is not an E-Type – the clever car is a minivan. Why do you want a hood, except to make the statement it is a petrol-engined car? We’re talking now about motor-in-wheel, electric, hybrid cars, and on top of that, autonomous driving, the opportunity to have maximum space. A designer now is like an architect. That’s how the Nucleus came about. It’s a very progressive and provocative shape. It is also fairly large, more than 1.7m high.

We worked to give it the right attitude, it’s not sporty or wedgy like a driven car but much more like a yacht, like a plane, something quite gracious that glides in the air. We also carefully considered the behaviour of the occupants of our vision of the autonomous future. We deliberately oriented the interior for occupants not staring at the road ahead. What is so spectacular about a road?

I decided to create an autonomous concept that people will find attractive, like a speed form, a gliding sculpture. In fact, once we had finished sculpting the Nucleus in the LA studio, I noticed that it reminds me of those cars from the 1920s, like the Packard. They had this long bonnet, very gracious lines that were flowing down. I think that this is because both cars were designed as ‘driven’ cars. In the Packard, you had a driver and the owner sat in the very back, in their own little saloon. It is interesting; the Nucleus has sparked a lot of discussion among designers, and that is what we want.

The world has changed since Steve Jobs designed the first iPhone; more people have become design-aware. Apple did a lot to popularise an understanding of design. Steve Jobs had a strong vision that went beyond styling and into the use. This design changed people’s lives, eventually, to such a point where his design was so good that we almost lost design – all phones look the same now.

I see a similarity between the Steve Jobs vision of how to change the world and a lot of the new Chinese EV companies. They start from scratch with a very clear, consistent vision of, ‘we need to put a product together,’ and the chairman’s vision will trickle down through the company to create a cohesive product, which has been the success of Apple.

When Icona was founded in 2010, we intended to open the studio in China, in Shanghai in particular, which is the European access point to China. Increasing Chinese investments have created a very important dynamism in the auto industry. At the Beijing motor show in April (2018), it was announced that over 300 new EV manufacturers were showing there. Now, let’s assume that 90% disappear. That still leaves you with more than 30 Tesla-type companies.

Our headquarters is in Turin and Icona remains a very Italian company. Our shareholders include the European prototype stamping manufacturer Cecomp, and also Tecnocad, an engineering company. The spark that drove their investment was that increasingly, everything is born from design. The company has the ability to cover the entire process, from management to styling, and from engineering to prototyping and production. I have worked for Icona since the company was first founded by ex-CEO of Stile Bertone Dr. Teresio Gigi Gaudio.

Our third office is the LA studio, opened two-and-a-half years ago. We identified a growing need in California because of the new technology of electric cars, autonomous driving, and most of the new investors coming from Asia.

At the moment we are running 28 projects, among 16 customers globally. In most cases, we develop the engineering directly with their team and design with their designers too. We take care of the design from scratch and, in some cases, we pass it over for production with a follow-up internally.

One thing I learned from working at Nissan earlier in my career is that, as a designer, it is not fruitful to just be a sketch monkey. Nissan is a company which renews itself all the time, and particularly at the time when I joined, which was just as Shiro Nakamura became head of design. At that time, Nissan had to reset the clock, reset everything. As a creative person, I really embraced the changes.

Another pivotal moment for me was when I was about to graduate from ArtCenter in Pasadena. One of my tutors asked what I wanted to do after graduation. I said, ‘I don’t know, I hope to work for a car brand that I like.’ He said, ‘Are you nuts? As a designer you are there to change the world. You’re not just there to hang around a brand that you like but will not change. Don’t be a sketch monkey, repeating the same stuff every day. You have to be creative, that’s what being a car designer is. Work for the car brand that you like the least, and then change it…’

That ties into the work I am doing now, because at the start of the process of designing a car, we need to start designing, not just do styling. Image boards are becoming increasingly something that is very important, but that is just the beginning of the creative process. Later, we need to evolve and nurture ideas. It is a collaborative process. For me, the design process is about bouncing ideas around with other creatives and advancing the design through discussion. Very fluid communication and teamwork is very important, an essential part of our process – and not always well understood.

Design moves very, very fast. If you are good at something and it’s your style, that style is going to be gone in five years, so always challenge yourself to launch the next trend. That’s certainly something that we try to show through our work at Icona.