Colby Masterson Part Two

Old classic car on the corner, still calling my name, so it seems, but I care for you, so I'll just ignore you, and drive you in my dreams.

I'll drive you in my dreams, drive you in my dreams.

Welcome to another episode of the Classic Car Corner Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Painter, and our guest tonight is Colby Masterson, who, if you remember, joined us last year after his first year of automotive design school.

And he joins us tonight with his design instructor, Jason White, from Detroit, Michigan. Gentlemen, welcome aboard here tonight.

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having us.

Oh, of course, yeah. This is always a very fun topic of discussion, and we certainly look forward to asking you guys some questions.

I know our listeners from the original podcast with Colby did great, so this is a great opportunity, and so we certainly appreciate you guys joining us in here tonight.

And Colby, let's start with you here, buddy. Remind us to what made you choose automotive design as your field of study.

Sure. Yeah, well, I've always really been into fine art. My mom's an art teacher, so I went to high school for fine art, and my first year of college was actually at a fine art college.

So got through the first year, I ended up meeting an industrial designer there who pointed me in the direction of design, because I felt that my art was more like scientific, a little bit more precise.

And so I kind of settled on design as a really good middle ground between art and kind of math and precision stuff.

Ended up meeting a car designer and was told about CCS, so it was a, you know.

A great fit.

Yeah, perfect. Literally perfect fit. I've always been a car guy.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, how fun. And so Jason, how long have you been teaching design and how has the field evolved since you started?

I've been teaching design off and on since about 2007.

Okay.

I've been teaching at CCS full time since 2018.

Okay, gotcha.

And over that period of time, the business definitely has changed quite a lot.

But you know the old saying, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

You'd be surprised how many things are actually kind of constants within the business.

I mean, obviously there's been a lot of change digitally and the tools that we use are different in a lot of ways.

And now we have AI as part of the equation.

And so it is a very different business than it was when I was in it.

Sure.

But at the same time, there are a lot of things that never change.

We still use full size clay models.

Designers are still expected to work well with engineers and finance people and marketeers and modelers.

I mean, those are constants that I don't think are ever going to go away.

The tools will change and the methods will change, but there's always going to be that need to work well with others

and to have a full size property that you can change and adjust quickly.

Clay allows us to do that really well.

And until something better comes along, it's probably going to be there for quite a long time to come.

Well, and that's a great point too because obviously you just mentioned clay.

Now are 3D printers able to do that?

I know they usually use the plastic and come up with a, are you all using, does clay have an ability to be involved with 3D printing by chance?

Yeah, we have a lot of students right now who are kind of blending the two.

They'll do part of their model in clay and then the other part of it like detail parts, for example,

things that you couldn't really model in clay because they're too intricate.

They'll do those as 3D printed parts.

So there's a lot of that going on and the results are pretty good.

I think that the medium is appropriate for what's being used like you can get, you know, the problem with doing overall like surfaces digitally

and then milling them out or as a hard model or creating a 3D printed part is that you now have very limited ability to adjust it once you see it in front of you.

Right.

And I've never run into a designer who does not look at a 3D part that comes out and goes,

Well, maybe we can change this.

That always happens.

Sure.

Yeah, trial and error, I guess, right?

Well, I tell you what.

So Colby, going back to you here, what's been your favorite project or assignment so far and why?

I would say probably my sophomore exterior.

In my opinion, I'm very much so an exterior guy.

Okay.

And so it was pretty open-ended, this one, where you kind of choose a future scenario to design for.

Okay.

And then once you've kind of set that parameter of the scenario, you then backtrack and make the car for it.

Okay.

So the whole semester is just going through ideation, development, and then into the final, you know, renders and a model.

So we actually had to do a clay model as well.

A half-fifth-scale clay model.

Okay.

So it was, I don't even know, probably two and a half, three, no, not three feet, but probably two feet long up against a mirror.

And so we did half of it and then it was mirrored over.

Mirrored over, okay.

Gotcha.

So it was a good introduction to clay.

Oh, there you go.

And it was just super fun.

Oh, I can imagine.

Yeah.

I think it was really fun to see him in that class was really what I thought was great, you know.

Gotcha.

And remind me how many students are in this class right now with you?

In A studio class, it's probably, let's say, 18 is like kind of heavy, pretty big.

Okay.

I think my interior class was 18 and that was pretty big.

Gotcha.

Yeah, so.

All right.

And Jason, so what qualities do you see in successful students that set them apart?

There are a lot of qualities that sets a successful student apart from others.

The one thing more than anything, I think, is the ability to be open-minded and to take

in information and assimilate it into their style.

If students come in with their own preconceived notions of what they want to do and what kind

of a designer they want to be.

And it almost never ends up that they're exactly what they expect they're going

to be.

They're going to be niche and it's not always where they think it's going to be.

But designers that are willing to roll with that and to accept, you know, a different

outcome than they expected, you know, I came into school back in 95 wanting to be an exterior

designer, but it turned out my best work was in interiors because I'm very detail

oriented.

Gotcha.

Okay.

And that's what I ended up making my career out of.

It kept the roof over my head and food in my stomach for about 17 years.

Right?

So, you know, you have to be willing to embrace what you're good at in the business because

there is a job for everybody at this point.

Sure.

You just have to embrace where you're after.

If you're like, I remember one student that came to CCS who was all about motorcycles

and that was all the student did, sun up, sun down was just motorcycles nonstop.

And we were telling him, you know, look, you know, it's great that you like

that, but you don't want to just make that the only thing you do because you're

severely limiting your possibilities are going to need a job.

Now, luckily for him, he got a job designing motorcycles.

Gotcha.

But it could have just as easily gone the other way.

Sure.

If they, if, you know, the job market hadn't had that waiting for him.

So you're never going to lose being versatile and you're never going to lose

if you embrace something that you seem to have in a natural adeptness to.

Gotcha.

So that's true.

Other things, students that manage their time well do better than students that

do not every single time there are no exceptions.

Gotcha.

Yeah, I can speak to that personally.

Yeah, exactly.

That makes or breaks a semester just, you know, in terms of personal

enjoyment as well as, you know, final outcome.

Yeah.

Time management is almost everything.

Yeah.

And feeding back on what you said, Jason, this is interesting to me,

obviously.

So, so you were like, oh, hey, I really like the exteriors, but somehow

you decided, okay, well, maybe interiors are more of my niche.

You know, I know Chevrolet, I think at one point, I remember seeing a

video of Chevrolet, I guess employees of some sort were going out to

people who had gone into like, let's say a home depot and they were

waiting by the Chevy model cars and the folks would come back out and

then the Chevy people say, hey, what would you do different about

this vehicle?

We're just asking the normal general lay person, you know, what

would you do different about one guy said, well, I think the

sunroof could have been a little bit longer or something.

And so they're taking all this input.

I was just wondering, were you inside a car at one point, Jason,

that said, hey, you know what, I wonder what would happen if,

you know, right now they've inverted the rear view mirror

that used to be the taller part or the wider part was down towards

the bottom.

Now they're flipping them around and now it's just simple things

like that.

I don't know if there was something that you're like, hey, I

kind of like this idea and maybe we ought to ergonomically set

it forward.

I don't know.

I think that's the stuff that you probably think about as you

become more of a professional.

You tend to start to look at other cars with a critical

eye and think maybe if they had spent five more minutes here

this might have been a little bit better.

Or there's something that I didn't quite think of.

I think once you're aware of the process, it makes you smarter

about what you see on the market and what people are selling

because you can almost sit in a car or look at a car and

think to yourself, OK, I can see the conversations going on

about this part right here or this feature.

This is probably how this went down.

I don't think you have any privileged information, but you

know probably how it went down.

No, exactly.

Well, that's very interesting.

Oh, very cool.

All right, Colby.

So how do you approach translating your ideas into

something tangible?

Well, at least in the process of the semester that we go

through, like I said earlier, we'll start an initial

ideation and that is really just like throwing sketches

at a wall.

And by that I mean that literally.

We'll say you need 20 pages this week and then

you say 20 pages and you want to come with 40.

You know, you really want to overshoot.

Just get as many ideas out as you can.

And then over the course of the semester, your teacher

helps you kind of narrow down and then we take a theme

and then we just develop.

So after development, we jump into clay.

There you go.

So really it just all stems from that initial ideation.

Gotcha.

And you use this term and I forgot it, but I don't

mean to put you on the spot, but on your last

podcast it was taking characteristics of bugs or

animals.

Biomimicry.

There you go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so would you say that you're influenced a lot by

that particular or is it more like, well, let's just

make a box and see how cool we can kind of.

So biomimicry is definitely a big player in a lot of

people's designs.

I think that it's something that I looked into a

lot in my first year and first half of the

second year.

But biomimicry is not the only thing we can take

inspiration from.

Really the only thing that people say not to do or

not to take inspiration from is other cars.

Because if you look at another car and then you

make your own design, you're really not breaking

that far out of a norm that's already been set.

But if you look at something that should not

be a car like whatever it is, a microphone stand

or whatever it is, and then you make that

into a car, that is just inherently going to

be more original.

Gotcha.

And just more out there.

So that's always the goal.

Well, speaking of originality, I've been

morphing 1976 Pacers to kind of land vans on

AI just to see what kind of interesting output

there for sure.

Jason, you kind of touched on this, you know,

the tools and or the skills.

What do you consider most essential for these

young designers today?

I know we talked a little bit about the clay

and the AI and the 3D.

I mean, as far as like tools that, you know,

you're sitting at a desk.

I mean, you got a pencil, you got what else?

Well, the most essential skill that any student

needs to have and that go and they'll need it

when they're a professional.

They need to be able to sketch analog

at the drop of a hat.

They have to be able to do this.

It doesn't matter, you know, how high tech

the tools get.

There are going to be instances where they're

going to be expected to just sit down and draw

without the benefit of a computer.

Got you.

And it's something that companies continually tell us,

you know, we need this skill to be present.

We can't hire somebody who just does blender models

or only does digital stuff and nothing else.

We don't want students where we don't want

designers like that.

We want students that can sketch well.

Got you.

If you go to our January show or our May show,

where we, you know, it's basically where students

are picked up by companies or get interviews lined up,

some of the very best students we have will have

a notebook next to their clay model and you open it

and it's just one incredible analog sketch after

another one or a whole series, just one after the other

after the other after the other.

And this is just cotton candy for the people

who are coming to hire students.

This is what they want to see because you can see the process.

You can see the creativity on the page.

Sure.

That tells them more about a student and what their

design processes and anything that they would do with

digital tools.

Is that something?

Well, I think correct me if I'm wrong.

You might know this, but I believe it was sketched

on an airplane napkin, the AMC Gremlin.

Does that bring a bell to you?

I think there's a story about that, whether it's true or not.

Exactly.

Yeah.

But a lot of really pivotal ideas have happened

at just the sketchbook level.

I think my personal theory is that part of the reason

you come up with some of your best stuff at that level

is because the pressure is off.

You're not working with something that's expensive.

You're not working with a computer.

And you basically can let yourself go.

And if you don't end up with something you like,

you just crumple it up and throw it behind you

and do something else.

It's a lot easier to be loose and free with materials

that are low-tech, I think.

Yeah.

No, that's true.

I would agree.

No, I totally agree with that.

I'm going to keep it simple, stupid guy for sure.

Yeah.

All right, Colby.

So what's been your biggest lesson or challenge so far

in auto design school?

Lesson.

Let's see.

Probably, I probably have to just go back to time management.

Well, time management's one big one.

In terms of something more specific to car design,

I would say breaking out of, as Jason said earlier,

the preconceived norms.

Because when I got to school, it was,

I was really into cars.

I've been around them all my life.

So in my mind, I knew what a car looked like.

And so I felt like for the first year,

I still catch myself doing it.

I'll draw a car that looks like a car

that could be on the road today.

And that's illustration.

That's not design.

We should always be pushing for future forms

and new ideas and stuff like that.

So really breaking away from what I thought

should be a car and trying to find what will be a car.

That is so cool.

Or whatever it is.

Not even just cars.

We have mobility classes, too.

So things that specifically aren't cars

are also taught at CCS.

I did a mobility project for Cincinnati's

abandoned underground subway.

And so I just kind of had to design a bus

and the system that it would run on.

And like the stations, I designed the stations as well.

And everything.

But it all kind of comes back to that same idea.

It's like, if you're thinking about it and you design it

and it looks like what it should be, quote unquote, should be,

you're probably not drawing the right thing.

Gotcha.

So I think breaking away from that was my biggest lesson.

Very cool, buddy.

All right, Jason.

So what current trends in car design excite you

and or worry you?

Well, the one that worries me more than anything

is this kind of trend to low-poly design.

Yeah.

That's typified by the Cybertruck.

I'm not going to say there isn't a place for it.

But it's certainly not the most sophisticated way

to design a car.

We have students that come in at the freshman level

and they're convinced that that kind of design

is like the pinnacle of design,

simply because it's the one that's got,

that takes up the most oxygen.

And we have to deprogram them and tell them,

no, there's other ways to design a car.

And I mean, I understand the notion of creating a vehicle

or a product that is the ultimate outlaw statement

that basically says to the world,

I don't care about your rules, I'm going to do it this way.

There's a place for that kind of attitude

and that kind of product,

but you can't approach everything that way.

OK.

You can only approach certain things that way.

So if that, you know, there's far more sophisticated ways

to approach designing a car.

I'm not delegitimizing that trend.

I'm just saying that that's just one pass.

Got you.

And I think, and if you only work along that path,

the last thing I want is for us to have a bunch of students

who think that car design is all about throwing together

polygonal slabs that have a small amount of crown

in them and calling it a day.

That's not what design is about.

Certainly not in this day and age.

Right.

So that bothers me a little bit.

OK.

And something I'm worried about.

The design trends that you think,

I have to mentally remove the fads

from what I think is actually moving this

in a positive new direction.

I think there's a new emphasis on simplicity

that's happening now,

especially driven probably by,

maybe not directly by,

but it kind of dovetails well with the autonomy

that's being explored.

And like for example,

when I went to the CES show a couple of years ago,

these vehicles are now productionized.

Honda has a separate brand called,

I believe it's called Zero, I'm not sure.

OK.

Series Zero or something.

In any case,

they did this really beautiful, clean sedan

and a very, very tastefully done van.

OK.

And they were just really pure, beautiful shapes.

And I just thought to myself,

I'd love to see more of this.

And doing simple, clean design is not easy to do.

Gotcha.

Because you're working with very, very minimal devices.

Right.

A lot of cars have an excess of aesthetic devices.

So you don't know where to look first.

When you're doing a very simple vehicle

that you don't have that safety net to catch you.

Sure.

So I'd like to see more simplicity, frankly.

Because I think that I'm just a little bit tired

of the design by checklist.

Gotcha.

That would seem to have so many cars right now.

Well, I mean, I think you bring up a good point.

I was telling Colby I'm more of a classic car guy.

And you can certainly tell the Pontiac GTOs

from the Ford Mustangs of that era

and that kind of stuff in today's cars.

I mean, unless you're a car person or an enthusiast,

you really can't really tell a whole lot of difference

between especially some of the full-size sedans

that are out there.

But going back to the simplicity and design,

I mean, it's not just, in my opinion, of course,

just putting something together on a piece of paper

and saying, hey, I mean, in design,

you got to worry about what kind of fuel economy,

what kind of, you know, characteristics

for the controllable collapsing of these cars

and the in-vit they're involved in an accident.

I mean, there's a lot of other things besides just,

you know, just designing what you're wanting to see

because you've got to take all that other stuff, obviously,

into consideration.

Absolutely.

An automobile is the most complicated product on the planet.

And being able to produce one or design one effectively

is largely dependent on a designer's ability

to interface with other people in the process.

I'm talking about engineers, marketeers,

finance people, safety people, human factors engineers.

The better that you can interface with these people,

the higher chance you'll have

of getting what you want on the road.

Gotcha.

Because, you know, and we try to do that

with the curriculum at CCS.

We have a human factors class.

We have materials and manufacturing class.

We have a packaging class.

And the goal is not for our students to be experts

in all of these different fields.

Obviously, they can't be

because they're not going to school specifically for that.

But at least they have a nominal level of understanding

of these things so that when they get into the business

and they encounter people who this is their specialty,

they can speak to them on their level

and work with them to find a solution

rather than running up against roadblocks constantly.

Sure.

Well, yeah.

I mean, that is an excellent point for sure.

Yeah.

So I mean, everything you're saying,

I definitely at some point want Colby to say,

hey, Jason, when are you going to come up

to our college and witness and see these things?

I would love that.

So I'm going to hold you to it.

Anytime.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And maybe my other podcast buddies too, for sure.

Yeah.

But, all right, Colby,

so are there particular eras of car design

like 60s muscle cars, 1980s wedge style cars

that influence your work just out of curiosity?

Yeah.

I mean, definitely.

I think that we try and take inspiration.

I mean, I try to have as much knowledge

on as many cars as I can.

But I think probably the one that's my favorite

is maybe 90s with the long drawn out forms

and like the really like, I don't know.

I feel like nowadays we usually try to design

from a speed form or at the very basis,

some kind of quick shape with no wheels

is what a lot of people start with.

And I feel like the 90s was a really good starting point

for that kind of speed for me design.

You know, like a lot of those cars,

if you take the wheels off them,

they look like a flying bullet or something like that.

Yeah.

And I think that that really speaks to like how

at the core of the design process

that kind of speaks to.

I got you.

Yeah.

All right.

And Jason, so EVs in autonomous cars,

you know, they're kind of reshaping the automotive world,

if you will.

How is that impacting design education

in your thinking?

Well, definitely it changes the psyche

of the person who's purchasing the vehicle

or interacting with the vehicle.

Because if you think about it,

the way that people identify with the product

of the automobile,

it's usually something they own.

And it's usually an avatar that expresses,

if not who they actually are,

what they want people to think they are.

Okay.

So now we're moving rapidly to a situation

where in the future,

in the not too distant future,

a lot of people are going to be,

instead of owning a car,

having a subscription-based service

because they realize that putting five figures into an item

that sits outside all the time

and doesn't move most of the day

is probably not a good idea.

Interesting.

All right.

Yeah.

And the other part of that is

it'll likely be an autonomous vehicle

so it'll be doing the driving.

And that is a fundamental change

because anybody who's deriving

most of their pleasure in a car from driving it

is now going to be doing other things,

not physically piloting it.

So the question becomes,

how does that change the aesthetic

language of the vehicle?

Because I would argue that you can't just

keep doing what you've been doing all along.

Now there are people out there,

self-styled pundits who would tell you

that we're going to be chauffeured around

in cars that look like toasters.

And I honestly think that's not only wrong,

it's depressing to think that way.

I don't really know what the answer is.

I continually look to our students

to provide an inkling

or an idea of where we're going,

where that's concerned.

Because honestly I have no clue where it's

going to go.

Gotcha.

The future is like,

I think this is,

I'm quoting Terminator 2

at one point and there's like,

the future now becomes like a dark,

unlit road ahead of you.

Gotcha.

And you're making things up as you go along.

That's how it feels right now.

Right.

Well, you know,

it's funny you say that.

I mean,

part of the very joys of auto ownership,

in my opinion,

I've got a small little collection of cars

and each and every single one of them

are unique in their drive ability

and their sounds and their,

you know, just overall maneuverability

or whatever.

And so they're all fun in their own unique ways.

And so to me,

driving is really part of the whole fun

experience with these things.

And you start getting into these autonomous cars

and, you know, while I understand,

you know, it's a 24 seven,

365 world out there with,

you know, everything's,

there's always people working and, you know,

there could be some,

and there could be some benefits to this

for people who aren't able to drive.

But, you know,

it would be very hard for me

to get in a vehicle

and not pay attention

to where it's going,

who's behind me,

who's next to me and who's in front of me

with just assuming

that it's going to take you from point A

to point B without a glitch,

without a gray cloud that,

that, you know,

the signal doesn't get met to the car

and all of a sudden you're,

you're not in very good

in a good position.

But yeah, that's,

it's pretty interesting stuff

for sure.

And so, yeah, well,

I guess we'll have to see.

I was at an airport the other,

a couple of weeks ago and they have these

robots that come up and take all your

it's all, I mean,

it would follow the same exact path,

trajectory and all that other good stuff.

But, you know,

I still think EVs,

you know, I think we still,

and this is what I think,

what I know is another thing, but

I don't think we've got the infrastructure

for a full EV world

and, you know,

these cars that come up to you

and they have this angelic

sound to it.

It's just, I mean, like I said,

a lot of people who have EVs

wanted the sound of a resonator

in their car and so I think they were

putting resonators in these things

to authenticate acceleration and

Yeah, they do that.

And so, you know, you've got

some of that

characteristics that people

are wanting to carry forward with these things.

Yeah, it's

pretty interesting

opinion for sure.

All right, Koby, we may

have touched on this. What digital tools

are essential in your design toolkit

right now? I mean,

so, I know we did the sketch thing,

but digital wise, I mean,

what would you got some type

of scanner

or something that lets you know

the exact distances and in your,

you know. Yeah, so we use a lot of digital.

I mean, the majority of our

process, especially in ideation, is definitely physical

with just paper and pen, you know.

But once we're

out of that or even during it,

we'll scan those pages in and bring

them to Photoshop, you know, and do

either enhance the sketches in

Photoshop or just render over them.

So, what that allows us to do is

to just like really quickly explain

the actual surfaces

of what, you know, your designs are doing.

So, whereas

before digital, you might have had, and we did

this in freshman year, they taught us all analog

process, but like, you'd have to

pull up cans on paper, colored paper

and do render with like

chalk and markers and stuff like that, just to describe

the form. Sure. Whereas nowadays

it's a lot faster where

you can, you know, just open Photoshop and

do that same form 50 times

in one Photoshop file and find the one you want.

Gotcha. So we'll do that. We also

use Blender a lot, which is, I think Jason

mentioned Blender, just a really

really easy to use

cohesive 3D modeling program.

So once we have the sketches, we can

put them in Blender and actually start putting

real

volume to the sketches. And then

we can spin it around and see how it looks

in 360 degrees. Gotcha.

Yeah. And that's even gone so far as

to VR.

I think CCS offered a VR

modeling class. So it's kind of similar

to Blender, but you can actually

instead of you spinning the model around, you

can actually walk around your vehicle

or sit inside of it and really

really get to know it at a more personal level

before it goes into further processes

or before you choose it as a theme.

So you can really dive into more

ideas that way. Gotcha.

Yeah.

So some of the other questions

that I've got here have already been answered.

So have

you had any students, Jason, that

have come up with a

brand new

technology

or a theory or algorithm

or physics

that is

not

recognized? And if so,

I mean, has that gone on

to some of the

major car

designers?

Well, I've had students before

in like, for example, human factors

class who will come up with an interface

that is very

unusual or very creative

and

there will be times where I'm like, you've got to

get this thing patented, like now.

Okay.

Because it's like

I've said this to Colby before many times.

The hardest thing for interior designers is that

the number of buttons and functions that

you have in an interior never goes down.

It always goes up. There's always more.

And finding the home of all these

things and consolidating them and making it

easy to use is very difficult.

And every now and then, there'll be a student

that will arrive at some

interesting

way of doing

an interface. Like there was one student

that one time came up with almost like

I hesitate to describe it

this way because it sounds rudimentary, but it was like a

Rolodex kind of screen. It was like a cylindrical

screen and you could just page through

things and it was very intuitive

because of the cylindrical shape. And I was

like, this is really interesting. You should

patent it and maybe somebody

will use it one day in the

design. And there are other

tactile features that students

have come up with that frankly I would not have

thought of that helped to

streamline the process

of interacting with the vehicle.

So I've seen a great deal of those

over the years where I'm like this is pretty original.

That's really cool.

Yeah.

And aesthetically also

people have arrived at things that are really

different. One senior

student who was in the

department of design of the vehicle

based around the whole notion of black

holes and had this

kind of event horizon shape

in the wheel that went through

absolutely through the form and to the other

wheel on the other side.

You could debate

the feasibility of something like

that, but the aesthetic that he

arrived at was definitely original.

And nobody had ever seen it before.

Right.

Do you all test

I mean if you come up with something Colby

and you're like okay it's on paper

now I've got it in play form

or 3D form

and then you want to bring it to like

okay I want to bring this to

life. I mean

does that happen and do

you all test it or do you all get

some engineers that come out

and verify that yes this is in

fact

a viable

process that could work or

help change or evolve the

card design process.

I don't know I can't really speak to the facts as

if any student work has gone to

like a production setting as you kind of mentioned.

I think we kind of

settle on once the design has been

finally realized

and rendered out, modeled

that kind of stuff. That's kind of usually where we

leave it.

At least at the student level.

I'm not sure actually that's a good question

for you Jason have you ever seen anything go further than that?

I don't know I think it's more likely

that you'd see students working on something at an

internship level at a company and that actually

goes somewhere.

But as far as like an actual design

at the student level

that thing goes on to do that

that's pretty rare. I haven't seen that too often.

Wasn't there there was a student

and I'm just remembering this now last semester

who did his motorcycle

design and he actually

modeled out his design and put it over

his motorcycle and I don't know if it's done

or not but he had it and he brought

his motorcycle into the studio and stripped it

and it was actually like

building the foam and then sculpting it

in the studio and the promise was that

it's going to be actually on that motorcycle

working at some point but I'm not sure

how far along that one is.

Well the danger there

is that you get way

in too deep in something

I mean

no one's expecting an actually physical

one-to-one property

I think

there is a story

from CCS lore that

a lot of people repeat and that's Ralph Shields

when he was a student at CCS

he did a full-size interior

as his senior thesis

using foam I believe

and some other things. I'm not sure if Clay was part of it

but in any case he was able to make it one-to-one

as an interior

and nobody had ever done this before

and

you know I really

it blows my mind that he was able to achieve

that in the amount of time that he must have

had to do it

I don't think that's something that any student

could do I mean Ralph is

one of the brightest lights in our business

you know there's things that he can do that are just

you know amazing so

I don't know that's

I would if a student wanted to do that

I would be like all right first of all

make sure you have the time to do it

and you know but

but I think as far as

like bridging that gap between

the real world

and student level

I think you see more of that at the internship level frankly

than you do

within the studio environment at the school

Wow

Okay Jason so

you kind of tapped on this a little bit

what advice

I mean I know you talked about the ability

to sketch

what advice in your

seasoning as an instructor

would you always give

your students

whether it's you know I've got a button on my desk

it says never never never give up

you know so I look at that

it's like okay I can do this

I can you know inch by inch it's a cinch

you know it's one of those things

what advice I mean I'm sure you probably

get some students that are like I don't know about this

or no this is too hard

I mean what advice would you give

to somebody that's

presently

in design school and maybe

you know either wishy washy

or you know

thinking ahead of themselves

just what would you say to these folks

well speaking about

wishy washy

kind of modalities

I can tell you where that comes from

generally it usually is

the result of listening to too many people's opinions

okay

I mean the first and foremost person you should

be listening to as your instructor

that's the first person you should be listening to

I'm not saying that you shouldn't take the temperature

of what you're doing you know with regard

to people in class

but I've seen what happens when students listen

to every single opinion that's thrown at them

it paralyzes them

they can't make a decision

so at some point you have to

believe in what you're doing

and turn off all that

noise and just execute

and believe in what you're doing

there's always going to be somebody

Monday morning quarterbacking

what you're doing it's always one guy

in a studio that's like that

both professionally and at the

student level there's always one

who's like I would have done it this way

and it's like well this isn't your model

and I chose to do this way

at some point

you have to be your own designer

I mean and you have

to be willing to commit to something

but that would definitely be one thing

I'd say

I've already mentioned time management

so I'm not going to belabor that

but definitely you have to

know when to

or whose opinion to listen to

it's funny because I run into a lot of students

who will listen to what their

classmates say

before they ever listen to what I say

and I always scratch my head

and say currently if I'm wrong

but you're paying a lot of money to hear

I mean that's a great point

sure

so not that their points are

not that their points of view are invalid

but it's like

you have to consider

this is also what leads to a situation

where everybody starts sketching the same

and everybody's ideas start looking the same

they all start comparing themselves

to each other and next thing you know

creativity is the first casualty

suddenly everybody's work starts to look the same

and you can't have that

yeah so okay so

and leading on to that what's been

the most rewarding part of your teaching

design career so far

well this is going to sound like an obvious answer

but really it's just watching

a student progress

from four years you know when they arrive

to where they are at the end I

yeah Jason I've seen

I've seriously seen students come to CCS

with zero

skills and I mean

zero like having no

idea how to even begin

drawing a car

much less you know understand

the creative process that goes into

designing a car

I've seen students come in with that

like they're literally getting on the ground floor

and by the end of four years

they're just incredible

with their design abilities

and understanding

of form and just creativity

and you have

companies clamoring to get their

QR code and their business card

and it is so

rewarding to see that at the end of the line

well yeah because

you're part of their development obviously

well I

I like to think that we just

shepherd them in the right direction

the

creativity and the ideas and everything come

from them if they don't

generate them they don't exist

so it's

a lot of it is just

encouraging people to go a certain

direction and trying to shepherd them through the

four years and I've seen incredible

success stories and that

that's what keeps me getting up in the morning

well sure so okay so yet again

you're hitting the next question here

so where do you think car designs

headed in ten years

or the next ten years

that's a big question

it's really more

of a question for Colby because

he's the one who's going to be

deciding what that future looks like

I got you

I'm going to be

in a log cabin somewhere

got you in ten years

Colby

what do you think buddy

as Jason kind of mentioned earlier

I think the move towards

autonomous vehicles was going to be

ever present in the next ten years

I really think that's going to be a big shift

because most people

I know you and I

like driving cars we like the idea of cars

as they are now and it's a great time

but I think for most people

it's a device, it's a tool

and the simpler a tool can get or the more

easier tool can become to work with

or the more efficient it can be

or the more cost effective it can be

that's what they'll buy

and so I think the sooner companies

come out with these ways

to simplify people's lives

i.e. autonomy because

you could be working or you could be

doing something else on your commute

or you could be saving time that way

I think that autonomy

is one of the big players

in the next ten years

very cool

so

I've got a couple more questions here

and it's already been almost 45 minutes

it goes by fast

I'm telling you when you talk about some

but for both of you guys

what design features

of course I'm an older car guy

but what design features from older cars

would you like to see make a comeback

in any future designs

Jason you want to take it away

I think it's the first one

I touched on it earlier

but just approaching design

as more of a holistic and a simplistic exercise

and I don't

when I say simple

I don't mean that it's not sophisticated

like for example

like if you take like a Porsche 911

for example

if you look at a Porsche 911

the overall form language that's there

is very clean and very simple

and not really

it's easy to look at that and say

there's really not much to this

but there is believe me

that's probably the hardest thing to design

because there's no crisp lines

to fall back on

you are designing round of forms

the entire way

that's really difficult to do

but

what I really want to see going forward

is a little bit more simplicity

because

the problem with a lot of vehicles

you see on the road right now

I think I mentioned before

the whole design by checklist thing

it's like everybody has to have the same light catcher

and the same little fake vent on the side

and the same size

logo and the same size

I've lost count how many people have hexagonal

front grills

and everything just becomes homogenized

and the thing is too

a lot of design

stuff that makes

waves right now it's just a fad

and it's next thing you know it's supplanted

by something else it has a very

short shelf life it's almost like

we're designing cars the way we did back in the 50s

where there was planned obsolescence

and things change

year to year all the time

they have to because the stuff you're trading in

this is really like kind of sculptural stuff

that really doesn't have a point

but is more

the point is that you catch the eye

than anything else that stuff has a very

short shelf life on the other hand

you know if you can design something that's still

going to be beautiful 10, 15, 20

30 years from now

I mean that's the holy grail right there

that is something

that

is you know that I always wanted

to be a part of as a designer

and you know

those are the kind of vehicles that will be in museums

down the line

so I'd like to see more of that

personally and you know

the takeaway from that too

I mean you know the first thing that comes to my mind

is a 57 Chevrolet

I mean you got the Dag Mars on the front

chrome polished bumpers

you've got

just the tail fins

that Harley Earl designed back in the day

and it's just I mean you see these

things and it's like oh man

how cool would it be

and you know I'm in the car business

on top of the podcast

and you know I get people in all the time

like man I just wish they'd bring back the boxy old

Lincoln's with the slap side

suicide door look and

modernize it with today's conveniences

but also have that old school

aesthetics

so I was just curious what you guys thought about that

so it's the problem with doing that

is that you're taking it out

of its you know natural

habitat so to speak

and because you know for example

tail fins didn't just happen by accident

they were part of America's

fascination with the jet age

if you were to take that feature

and put it on a car now it wouldn't make any sense

because the current narrative doesn't match

that at all

so you know

that's why

when you trade in retro

themes

you know

retro I've always said is like plaid

now sometimes and other times it's had a style

but you

you can't build a brand off a retro

first of all that's impossible

because you can't move anywhere

you're always just tethered to the past

but

yeah anytime you bring

some things out of the past

you gotta be very careful that it's not something

so foreign to what is going

on in the market now that people just look at it and go

well that doesn't make sense

not everybody's a car

design cyclopedia next to their

next to their

desk so it's

yeah it's a good point

that's a very good point

everyday people have to relate to the car they're buying

if it's something related to

50 years ago they're not getting

it's a good point

that is a great point

okay so finally

we'll have one more

quasi

got you a question for you Jason here

okay

you'll be able to answer it

my co-host Eric

came up with this we

asked Mario Andretti when he was on our podcast

we've had Wayne Carini on here

we've had Heather Storm

this has been a very rewarding

experience to have all these

folks on here

but I'm going to get to that question here in a second

but before we do

Colby and or Jason are there any shout out

you'd like to mention before we wrap the podcast up

yeah I mean definitely CCS

for sure

definitely CCS

that's kind of my big main one

it's been a great experience

absolutely amazing

well it sounds like your takeaways

your enthusiasm

and what you've got planned ahead

is just absolutely phenomenal

and I wish you guys all the luck in the world

I would like to point out

that Colby's work ethic

and his enthusiasm

as a student is just as much

part of the reason why he's successful

as going to CCS

he brings a lot to the table

and that's awesome

thank you

that's awesome

we're looking forward to seeing

where the future goes for Colby

and we love being a part of it

and so yeah

so here we go Jason

here's your final

question

what did you take your driver's test in

I gotta be honest I don't remember

I honestly don't remember

it was probably like a Ford

Mondeo or no wait

it would have been the American version

a Contour or something

it was a very mundane sedan

I honestly don't remember what it was

I'm sorry

mine was a 1980 Toyota

Corolla for crying out loud

and I'm trying to find that car

but they've all been manipulated

with the big engines

because it has rear wheel drive propulsion

they're all

drift cars now

those are great cars, those are super cool

I just can't find one in purest form unfortunately

but yeah it's always fun

what was yours again

it was a Hyundai

Tucson

I think that's what I remember you saying

you know just whatever

gotcha

Colby and Jason it has been great having you

this evening and we certainly

as mentioned wish you guys much continued success

and we obviously gonna want you

back on next year

for the end of year

3 so

and Jason we would love to have you back on as well

so you're always invited of course

remember you can find us on our

Facebook page at the Classic Car Corner

thanks for listening

and happy motoring from your friends

here at the Classic Car Corner

we'll see you next time

on the Classic Car Corner

still calling my name

so it seems

but I can't fool you

so I'll just ignore you

and drive you

in my dreams

I'll drive you

in my dreams

drive you

in my dreams

you

American Pacers

Tesla Cybertruck

Pontiac GTO

Ford Mustang

Porsche 911

Ford Contour

Toyota A1980 Toyota

Toyota Corolla

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