Julian Thomson: “We are here to provide another point of view”
Julian Thomson, design director of GM Advanced Design Europe, talks recruitment, managing a team of designers and driving growth
General Motors was well covered in America and the Far East, but there was nothing in Europe. Particularly compared to Stellantis and Ford, GM lacked that input. But this new GM studio in Leamington Spa, UK, is not here to design cars for Europe, or even to put a European spin on American product. We are here to provide another point of view. For any brand to be successful in the world, car design needs to be a global product. It needs to have all those influences in the melting pot.
The team started work in July 2022 and opened this 30,000 sq ft space in October 2023. Some cars and brands we knew well – Corvette and Cadillac – but we didn’t know so much about GMC and Hummer. So to learn about those brands, bring our creativity – and some naivety – to the process with a fresh pair of eyes has been very exciting for us and I think GM’s other design departments have enjoyed it as well.
The first phase of our recruitment needed to be quick and did require me to hire people I’d worked with before with good reputations. Currently, we have 11 different nations represented among only 35 people and the aim is to recruit designers from all over Europe. Our job is not only to provide European design ideas to the global design organisation, but also provide designers to work in GM studios elsewhere. We’re a funnel into Detroit, California and China.
You’ve got to be approachable, integrated, knowledgeable about the work going on and, at the same time, surprising and different
We are set up more like a consultancy, with seven or eight designers, six visualisation and digital people, six clay modellers, three engineers and business people as well. The important point to make is that we’re set up for delivery. We don’t have any fat. Everyone we employ has to be able to take on a project straight away. Our intention is to stay at 35-40 people for now, because when you’re running a design operation like this, internal communication and how you interact with the mothership is really sensitive. You’ve got to be approachable, integrated, knowledgeable about the work going on and, at the same time, surprising and different.
We get everyone in the room before any new project starts and have a discussion. Some are there just to listen, others to throw in ideas, but from ‘day one’ they feel equally involved. As you get bigger as a team, it’s difficult to keep that link and maintain the spontaneity and communication. It probably can work if we get to 50 or 100, I don’t know, but it might become less natural. There are no hard and fast rules regarding hybrid working for us, but we want people who want to be here. We want people who work as a team and who like working together. I know this is what you’d expect to hear from a manager, but it is really important.
We’re across all the brands and try to make sure we have constant involvement with each brand’s design director. There’s a great deal of strength in the Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Corvette and GMC brands, but they’ve got to make sure they don’t become ‘run of the mill’ products. They need strong characteristics.
I always say that managing a car design team can and should be the easiest job in the world
Very few brands market themselves as being good at everything. They seem to focus on a single characteristic. That might be about where they come from, what they like or look like, how they drive, whatever. But that singular focus and identity is very important to establish yourself in the market. And that’s what interests me about the GM brands: to have a very clear purpose for each one and how their values can remain relevant in the future against an onslaught of very good – but perhaps somewhat anonymous – product coming from China.
The industry is full of big egos and some companies have got extremely challenging ways of working, so I’ve been pleased to find that GM is genuinely a very open company, and open to sharing information between designers, engineers and marketing people. I pride myself in trying to set up the right atmosphere and work ethic and particularly as I get older, I’m really interested in how to make people creative, how to get the best out of them and allow them to grow. It’s something that really fascinates me and this is by far the best place to do that.
I always say that managing a car design team can and should be the easiest job in the world. Since they were kids at school, they wanted to be doing this job, so if you can’t get those people to enjoy doing the job and get the best out of them, then it’s your fault, not theirs.