Transcripts
1. Intro & Overview: Hello, everybody, and welcome
to the ultimate guide on how to seriously become a
professional car designer. My name is Kay, nice to meet you. Here's
a bit of my work. I'm a professional
exterior designer with experience in companies such
as Ford, Neo, and Honda, and I have a degree in
industrial design with automotive focus from Munich University of Applied Sciences, and I also have a degree in computational engineering
science from Achan University. Now, the big question is, is this course for me
or rather for you? This course is all about the process of becoming
a car designer, and it's not about
sketching at all. I have other courses for
that. Go check it out, just click on my name
and you'll see it there. If you're interested
in car design and how to become
a car designer, if you're curious,
maybe you're in school, maybe you're already
studying, and what you're studying is not
really suiting you and you always wanted to become a car designer, then
this course is for you. You're going to
see in this course the process of becoming
a car designer, the steps you have to take
like schools to choose, how to prepare for school,
internships and such things. It's not about design itself. We'll not talk about design
as a topic on its own. We'll talk about how to become a good designer, if
that makes any sense. And also this job is
not just one job. There's more than one job.
It's not engineering either. Some people think card design is engineering it's not that. You will learn the
various aspects of car design and the various jobs that come with car design. And like I said, it's also
not just drawing either. There's many jobs in
this industry that are not including drawing at all in the profession, right? It's only a part of it.
It's only one job or a few jobs that are
part of car design. And of course, it's also not
just for one person either. So here there's a bit of an
overview about this course. So you can ask yourself,
is this correct for me? We're going to talk
about where you are now that's very important. Maybe you're in school,
maybe you already studying. Like I said, there's going
to be some serious talk. There's going to be talks about choosing a correct school. There's going to be
preparations for school, how to act in school,
how to learn in school, the various different
jobs in this industry. And then later, when it gets
serious, some internships, approaching companies
and professionals, getting sponsored maybe,
which is very important. And what's also very important
is don't be an idiot. That's going to be a fun one
and some last words from me. I can promise you that if you're seriously interested in
becoming a car designer, this course might just change your life because
you will see things, you will learn things that no one will ever tell you about, because in the end, it is a very difficult and risky
industry to join into. In the end, I can promise
you that if you take part in this course and
you're seriously interested in becoming
a car designer, this might just change your life because
there's info in here, which no one else
will tell you about. And in the end, it is a very risky industry
to get yourself into, and it does come with a lot of aspects that you
need to consider. Alright, I hope
this motivated you, and I'll see you in
the first lesson.
2. 1. Where Are You Now?: Hi, and welcome to
your first lecture. So this is about
where you are now. Are you in school? Are
you already working? Are you at university? You might think, Is it
important really in this job? Of course, if you're
older person, it's going to be
harder for you to join the industry if you have
zero experience, right? If you don't know anything about caradine and you're
like, I don't know, 45, and you're like, I'm
going to become a car design. That's going to be
tough, of course, right. If you're a young person in
school or a bit older person, already done some studies or worked in a different
field, you're like, in your early 20s or
something like this, and you're like,
Okay, screw this. I'm going to become
a car designer. That's totally fine, right? Just be realistic about it. But in the end, all of
this doesn't matter. So like I said, maybe the age is a thing. Maybe you're a genius,
it could be, right? So what actually matters, then it's about this. How are you artistically? How are you sketching wise? Can you put ideas to paper? Because that's what
design is about. It's all about you
have a vision, maybe something functional, which a car is is a
functioning object. Automobile, something that automatically is mobile, right? It has a function.
It's a product in the end, industrial design. Can you bring across your idea? Maybe you want a seat to move a certain way or you have
an idea for a switch. It's all part of car design. Or you just want
like, Okay, maybe for this vendor of the car, I have a really cool idea for a shape that could
be something nice. It's all about putting
this idea across. I've laid out some examples
here of the Internet of people who applied
at universities and also some
professional people. So it's all about
this kind of stuff. You can see some work here is maybe good and some
of it is not so good. And that's also very
important, right? So it's important to be honest about yourself
and say, can I draw? Just by looking at this, can you tell me which ones are good and which one
are not are good? Right? So I put it kind of
in a way that you can tell. So this one on the right here
maybe not so good, right? Like I said, don't
lie to yourself. I've come across so many people. Since I'm active on
social and stuff, people contact me all
the time, which is why I created this course
in the first place, so maybe there's a more
condensed and better way to give people this information and not tell everyone the same thing
100 times and waste my time. So here's something for
you, right? All condensed. Don't lie to yourself.
Very important. Some people, they look at this, and they're like, This is the
best design in the world. I'm awesome. Or they think
This is so good, you know, or they go to a professional
person and ask for advice, and then the professional
person ignores them, or the professional
person tells them, Hey, this is not good.
And then they get upset. They're like, No, why do you say that? We're young.
We need to learn. Yeah, yeah, of course, right? But don't light yourself. Don't put a blind eye
to your own bad skills. We all started from
somewhere, right? And you have to know that when you
study in the beginning, you're probably not
going to be very good. None of us were. And it's okay. It's okay about it.
Don't be cocky about it. Some people, they even think, Oh, look, I did
this crappy sketch, and Mercedes stole it and put it on their new
car? No, they didn't. Of course they didn't.
Right. Design anyways, is very much about
having a library of design ideas and such and
using it accordingly, right? So you might have an idea
on your crappy sketch, and someone might have
had the same idea. Happens all the time. Look
at the cars out there. A lot of them look very similar. I'm pretty sure none of them actively copy each other, right? So don't go approach someone with a sketch
like this and be like, Hello, sir, please
give me a job. I'm the king of design. Don't do that. Be honest to yourself. Please don't do that. That's just making yourself
look like an idiot. You don't want to come
across as a deluded, delusional person
that's way over their head and where the ego is much bigger than their
skill. Don't be that. That's not good. So like I said, these are some examples of
total beginner sketches. I can tell because yeah, I'm sure you can
tell, too, right? I hope you can. And it's all about seeing if someone
knows what they're doing. Like the quality of work, the line quality, the actual design. Behind it. Because
on images like this, you always see more that
the person can't sketch. The person doesn't
know what they're sketching because you can easily tell that they themselves don't understand
what they're sketching. So how are they going
to convince someone else about their idea? They don't even know
themselves what they're doing. So if you are now,
that's important here. If you're a kid going to school, middle
school, high school, it doesn't matter, and you're
at this level, don't worry. I might have bashed it
now, but like I said, you are someone who's young, who has a lot of time on
your hands, you can improve. It's fine. We all
started from somewhere. When I was in
school, my sketches weren't much better
than this, right? You have to know
where you're at. When I was in school,
I always like, How do these designers do this crazy sketching?
It's so good. It's like magic? How do I do
that? I was wondering that. And I know I knew rather, I knew that my
stuff wasn't good, but I knew that
it wasn't better, and I wanted to get
to that level, right? So if you're an adult
and your sketch looked like this and
you like car design. That's fair enough. It's a
cool hobby to have, right? It doesn't mean you have to grind and waste years and money
to become a car designer, and it doesn't mean
you can't enjoy it. Of course, you can.
You can also improve. Just have fun with it. You know? Maybe you can have a
look at my other courses or other people's courses and learn a skill here
and there and like, Oh, that's so cool. I didn't
know you could do that. And you can come up
with your own designs and do some nice artwork. Of your own design, it's great. But maybe be realistic about
it and don't think you can make it into design
as a senior person. It's going to be very tough because young people can learn
quicker, of course, right? And okay, last point here. If you are studying design
in university, right? And stuff looks like this, dude, Man, I got to tell you you probably shouldn't
be doing design. You should be doing
something else. You might be asking, Yeah,
but I got into school, and I got accepted, so I can become a designer No that's why I have to stop
you because some schools, as evil as they can be in
the end it's business, you probably paid a hefty sum of money to get
into that school. And that's why you're
in that school. So be realistic about it, right? If you are in that school in first year or something and
you're sketch like this, man, you should really
rethink your career choices. Maybe do something else. Maybe design isn't
for you, okay? Maybe you should just do
it like the second person, the elderly person,
the older person. Just use it as a hobby. Don't make it a
profession because I guarantee you if you're in school and this is
your skill level, you're going to totally bomb but you're going to
waste money in school. You're never going to
get a job in car design. Almost never. I'm not
going to say never 100%, but very low percentage
probability, right. Alright, so maybe your stuff looks like this. That's
already looking better. I'm sure you guys
can tell, right? So if you're a kid in
school or something, dude, that's super
good. It's really good. You're already much better than most people who start university,
I have to say, right? So maybe you met
the previous guy and you look at his stuff, you're like, Dude,
what the heck? Why is this guy in university? And I'm in school,
and I'm much better. Maybe that's a reason for
you to go to school, right? So if you're at this level, you're at a good level, for
sure, to start and learn. There's still a few
mistakes here and there. It's not perfect.
Nothing ever is, right. But if you're at a
level like this, you can do rough hand sketches
and you understand basics. You have eye for aesthetics. That's also very
important. Some people can do amazing lines, but when they have
to design something, it looks like crap. That's why some universities do these acceptance tests, right? It's very important. That
you have the artistic eye. And unfortunately,
nowadays, universities and people in
education are becoming greedy and not serious about it, and they're not honest about it. They will tell you
you're good just to grab your money and go away with it and they know that
you're not good, right? This kind of stuff
I'm really not keen or happy about,
unfortunately. Yeah, so if your
stuff is like this, you'll be at a great, great, great, great position
to start school. If you're in school
and you're like, in first year or something,
also, keep going. Keep pushing. You've
already come this far, and the sky is the limit. If you have something like this, already, um you're
either a very, very good student or you're basically ready
for a job or you're working cause some
of the sketches I've taken are from people who are working already who've
had some industry experience. So if you're a kid or something in school
and you draw like this, dude, you're made for
this job. Go for it. Don't ever stop
improving. Keep pushing. You're going to
be freaking good. You're going to be really, really good. Keep
pushing, right. If you're an adult
and you're not in the design industry and
you sketch like this, why are you not in
the design industry? If you're in school
and you sketch like this, good for you. I don't think you're
even watching this course. It's
going to be fine. Okay, so that's our
first little lecture. I hope it was helpful, and I'll see you in the
next video. Bye bye.
3. 2. So You Are Serious?: Right, so welcome to
your second lecture. So you're serious, huh? Okay, so okay, some of you might be just interested
in knowing how this works, but let's do some
serious talk now. Okay, because be honest, it's a very hard thing
this job on your life, on your mental health, maybe even on your physical health,
it could be anything. It's going to be a lot
of change in your life. And if you like adventure, like if you like trying new things and experiencing new things, this is
something for you. If you're like, Okay, I want
to stay with my family, my hometown, it's not
gonna be for you, right? So let's talk about
some of these points. The first point, like I said, is going to
be life changing. You're going to be
forced to do a lot of things because that's just
how this industry is. Already, the first step of
getting into the school, um, and finding a school
unless you live in one of the cities where
the schools are is going to be tough because
you're going to have to move. And already for some people, moving away from
their hometown is a big thing or moving
away from far away from their hometown is
a big thing because it means you need to find
your own place to live. Right? You need to be
independent now. I don't know. Of course, being
independent is good, but you have to do that, right? And especially, it's very hard if you're in a
different country. Say you're coming
from India or Asia or something where it's a bit, where you don't have
schools at all. Then it means you have to
move to a different country, and it's going to be even harder because there's going to
be visa issues, right. Living costs are
going to increase. You probably have
to take out a loan, things like this, and it's
really, really difficult. So it is life changing. And as I touched
on already also, it's going to be
expensive as well because moving on its own is not cheap. You
need to get there, right? You need to rent a flat. I doubt your dad wish that you can buy a house and
just live in it. Then why do you even
need this, right? You already have a job. So moving is going
to be expensive. The universities and schools are unfortunately all very expensive or on the expensive side. There's a few
exceptions. We'll talk about that in the
next few lectures, but we're talking not about
a few hundred dollars. I'm just going to
say dollars because that's a known currency. It's not just going to be
a few hundred dollar per semester or like
$1,000 per semester. It's going to be in
the 101010, sorry, tens of thousands of dollars per semester
per year for school. And that's excluding visa costs, excluding rent, excluding yeah food and
transportation, all of that. It's very, very expensive. And also, like I
said, moving around, it's a big aspect, not
just moving to school, which we mentioned
before, moving around. So you go to school in
a different country. Let's assume the worst, let's say, the
furthest distance. Okay, let's assume the
furthest distance. You move far away from
your home country. Take out a big loan to study at this very renowned
design school, and you have to move
again because you found an internship at that
same Mercedes Benz, and you are in Italy. So you have to move to
Italy to Mercedes Benz, and you probably want to
keep your flat in Italy. When you go back to school,
you still have that flat, but you need to find
a flat in Germany and to be able to live somewhere when you're
interning at Mercedes Benz. So you got double rent. Right? And again, you
might have a visa problem. Say, you have a passport
that doesn't allow you to just like that
in any EU country. Maybe it's just in Italy. So that's a big one. Compromise
also is a big thing. Maybe you have a
girlfriend at home, you have family at home, and suddenly you decide you're going to move to a
different country. And that's going to be a
big compromise, right? It's probably not
going to work out with your current girlfriend or boyfriend unless they are
willing to go with you. I know people who
are in the industry. They're both in
the same industry. They're both studying or
working as car designers, and say, one person
finds a job here, and since the job is
so hard to get to get the other person finds a job in a different
city or country. It's going to be very
tough. You can see where I'm going or what I'm
talking about here. And, of course, when you
move to a new country, a new language is a must. If you move to Germany,
study in Germany, you're gonna have to
learn a bit of German. It's just how it is because
you're living in the country. You're not going to
survive with just English. In some countries, that's
worse than others. And even some schools will only teach you in their
respective language, right? There might be a very, very
good school what you like, you like the stuff they
do, and it's in France. You can't speak a
single word of French. And the whole course
is in French, so you have to learn that, too. And it's a challenge,
but don't be scared. It's possible. I know people who have made all these big
steps, including myself, who've made these
big decisions to go abroad and study in
a different country, take on the risks, learn the language,
and such things. It's really a big challenge. But if you see it positively, it's a big chance also to develop yourself as a person by living in a
different culture, learning their language,
studying there, right? And anyways, you're going to be moving around for
internships a lot. It's great to it's a great opportunity to see lots of different
cultures and systems. And it will really
enrich you as a person, and also it will really enrich
you as a designer as well. And it's going to be hard work. This is all just the
stuff that comes with it, right? But it's going
to be hard work. So you're going to be there
putting in a lot of hours. There's a 10,000
hour rule that to become anywhere near
good at anything, be it playing an
instrument, a language, a skill, you need to
put in 10,000 hours. And I'm pretty sure most designers have
done that ten times or at least more than that to
become really good, right? It's hard, hard work. At University, for example, I'm just going to quickly
take it to the front. At University, if they
give you a task and you do just a task and you're done with it and you
go party with your friends, it's not going to be enough. And, of course, it's a
very competitive industry. So there's going to
be lots of people because it's a passion job. People like cars.
People like drawing. It's an art form.
People like doing art. It's like a hobby almost, right? Many people for many
people, cars are a hobby. They modify their cars,
they tune their cars, they drive their
cars, they race them. It's a hobby. So it's a hobby job, and it's
very competitive. And there's not many jobs. Um, when I went to school,
no one told me this, but this is kind of the way
how it is. You go to school. Some schools will
take a lot of people, and you look to your left,
and you look to your right. And both and one all the three of you will maybe have the chance of
getting a job, right? Normally, to become
a car designer, you're going to have
to be in the top ten of your school of
your class, at least. If you want to get a job in
interior or exterior design, you're going to have
to be probably top five of your year of your class. And we're talking out of
100 here sometimes, right, which it shouldn't
be, but it sometimes is unfortunately out of 100. So you can calculate
your chances. If you want to do other jobs in car design, which
is also possible, also great jobs,
then the chances are a bit higher, maybe top 20. But generally, among the people who are interested
in car design, let's say, not just
the ones in school, you're going to have
to be top top, top, top top, 3% of the people in terms
of skills and also personality is
also very important. You can be the most amazing
designer in the world. But if you're an a hole, it's going to come
out at some point. It's going to bite you and
you're going to, you know, be cut off on your journey, unfortunately,
because people don't want idiots on their job. And even after all this effort, you put in all the effort. You did study hard. You made all these risks.
You collected debt. You took a loan to
study abroad and stuff. It still might not work. And at some point, maybe
it's time to change career. You can always do product design,
industrial design, right? Also, great industry to work in. You can do user interface
design or anything like that. Doesn't have to be cars. It's
not the end of the world. I'm just saying you can
still do other stuff, but doing actual car design, might just not work. So I hope this serious
talk was useful to you. I hope it wasn't scary. I'm
just being realistic, right? And when you see the
next few lectures, you're going to also
understand why it's like this because it's just the nature of the industry and the
nature of the artist, because people in the industry in the cardsig industry
are in the end, artists and they
have the same kind of mindset and emotions
that an artist has. And that's why there's such
high demand for this work, as in, lots of people want
to work in this sector, but there's not so much
offerings from companies. So there's not many jobs, but
a lot of people who would like to do this job, right? Alright, then we can move on to something
a bit more happy, which is the first step. School.
4. 3. Choosing Schools: Hello, everybody,
and now welcome to Section three schools. I'm from Europe. I
grew up in Germany. So for me, Europe is
a more known turf, more known area in
terms of school. But I've done some research and compiled here a list as of 2025, early 2025, what kinds
of schools there are in this world and the pros and
cons of each school, right? So in Europe, we have
HochelFotem in Germany. They offer bachelor and master
degrees in card design. We have Hoch Hof. Also in Germany, they offer
bachelor, it's quite new one. We have Hochelerminchen,
is the one I went to, also known as Munich University of Applied Sciences, MUAS. They offer bachelor. I'm
pretty sure they do master's, too, but maybe not
in car design. But for sure they do car
design in bachelor's. It's called industrial design, but then you do car design
as an extension part of it. You have Hochul
Rutling in Germany. They offer BA bachelor's, and it's focused on interior,
but it's really good. It's a really good
one for interior. And for English
language courses, we have y College of Art in the UK, very
known one in London. They do a master's degree. So you need a bachelor's
degree to study this one. Have Coventry University in
coventry in UK, as well. You have bachelor's and
master's degrees there. And now we go to Italy
to Iade in Torino. They have bachelor degree. I think that you might you
might need to learn Italian, but it's partially
in English, I think. You have ID in Torino and
also in Barcelona in Spain, they do offer bachelor degrees. And I'm pretty sure these
guys do it in English. But like I said, you probably would be better off to
learn a language as well, a bit, locally, at least a bit. You've got Scola Polytechnica
in Milano in Milan, Italy. They do master's degree,
also pretty good one. And in France, we
also have ICT Rubica. They do Bachelor. We have Strat School of Design in
Paris, very, very famous one. And you have umeo or UmeaOmeos
correct, I think, Omeo. They do MA, which is
master's degree in Sweden. And if it's not
specified otherwise, like interior exterior,
they do both, right? If it's just interior,
they just do interior. I think here it's
just hooks Heutlg in Germany that do interior only. Okay, let's have a
look at these schools. It's not 100% accurate, it's just from what
I've heard and what I being in industry, you come across
people who are there, and I did my
research back when I was looking for a
school to study at. And I did a bit
of a symbol here. I'm sure you can
guess what it means. So $1 sign means it's
quite reasonable price. So you're going to be
paying like a few hundred, maybe 1,000 let's say up to 1,000 euros per semester
to study there. The German ones are all
owned by the state, so they're not private schools. They are covered by the
state, so they're cheaper. If you are from Europe, I think it's almost free. So you only have to
pay your semester fee, which mostly is
your train ticket when you can go
around the country, for free because you
pay for a ticket. Um, and a little bit of money, like, for the
administration and stuff. It's really not much. I think when I was in
Munich, I was paying around 200 something euros
per semester per half a year, right? That's how cheap it is. Um these schools are typically very hard
to get into, right? So in Germany, the
first four schools, maybe they will
have some kind of tests at the beginning
where first, you need to do portfolio for these guys of a hand drawn art, they don't like to
see digital art. So hand drawn art
with various kinds of techniques, pastel color, watercolor, line drawings,
ballpoint drawings, of humans, of objects
of design stuff. They just want to make sure
that the people who join are artistically minded and they have the eye and
the hand for art. They don't want people who are let's say, not
suitable, right? Like the people we talked
about who sketch like a 5-year-old kid and think they're the best
son in the world. They don't want
people like that. They want to really
select the best people, which is fair because
then you don't waste time and money
studying there. So it's not for you. They
tell you that, right? But if you get
selected, that means you have the artistic, um, hand maybe the eye to pursue a study and a
career in this field. And even then you might
not make it, right? So these are the hard ones. Next, UK, we have RCA, which is super expensive. I don't know how much it is now, but last time I took it was
like 30,000 pounds, which, let's say, $30,000 roughly
or more even per year, and it's like a few
semesters, right. So you're going to be paying
a lot of money to get it. They have a really good
reputation from the past. Nowadays, it seems
like they're taking most people and the quality
of work is declining. So I always keep up with, like, graduates and what they
do for their thesis. So they're like
graduation projects, basically, which is the best of the best they can do, usually. It used to be amazing
stuff from RCA, not so good anymore,
unfortunately, right? Not so good. I would say not
the best bang for your buck to go
there for masters, especially if you have an engineering degree
and you want to suddenly to design you
think the school's good, you pay a lot of money,
you go there and you go, Ah, not good. Don't get a job. Waste money and time.
Don't do that, maybe. Commentary, I went there. When I was there
a few years ago, that was in 2018, it was
also on the expensive side. I think for EU students, it was 10,000 euros per year. And for international students,
15,000 pounds per year. I think it might be more now. And since UK is not EU anymore, it's
going to be even more. Uh, they take everybody. I think that tells
you a lot about the way the university works. We were 120 students per
year, which is way too many. Think of it like
this. Every year, there might be five jobs
in the UK in car design, and that they take 120 students. Not all of them can be
good, right, right? So I think they will take people who sketch
like five year olds. I, what am I saying? They take people who
sketch like five year olds and people will pass exams and get good grades at
university and have a complete crap portfolio at the end of it
and not find a job. And then they've already
also paid 15,000 pounds per year to study there and taken a loan for maybe
accommodation or something. So mm, maybe consider
somewhere else. Unless you're
confident, you know, you think you're good and you study yourself
and you're like, screw this, I just need to get in somewhere and do it
fair enough. You can. There's lots of good people who will come out of
coventry as well, but it will be, like I said, the top five people coming
out of those schools. And the rest are like, nope. Yeah, Tory, also on
the pricey side, I think we're talking
also in the multiples of thousands of euros per year, maybe not in the ten K area. I mean, at least when I checked. They also take almost everybody. I think they're a bit more
selective than coventry. Um, they're a bit
more easy on it. They will not take people who
sketch like five year olds. They will take people
who can sketch, maybe on an intermediate level. For sure, I think skill
wise is better than COV, but you can really tell by looking at the
graduation projects. In Covent be careful, they also mostly
show the good ones, and for every good one,
there's ten bad ones, right? And I'm pretty sure in Italy,
it might be similar, right? So these schools are very
much business focused. They want to make
money, right? So take a many students as they can. Um, and Espii Milano, I know someone from there,
good person, good stuff. You can do that it's masters, so you need to have a good
foundation and bachelors. I'm pretty sure they
don't take anyone either. And yeah, you can see, I wrote, like, hard take
most people take everybody. Hard mean, I mean, it's hard to get into, and it's probably
hard to study, too. The one that take everybody
are not hard, right? Not hard to study,
not hard to get into. And in the end, you can
see the results or not. And in France, also,
they're expensive. You're gonna have to also pay multiple thousands of euros. Um that's why the
double dollar sign, multiple thousands of
dollars to study there, not quite expensive as UK, but also quite expensive. But they're good.
They're good schools, and it's not that easy
to get into them. So ISD is very good. Strata is very good, and Omeo is also very good in Sweden. Okay, let's move on to
Asia Pacific and US. So, US, there's two famous ones. I just didn't consider any other ones because I'm
pretty sure they're not good. So we have Art Center in
California in Pasadena. I wanted to go
there, and I quickly realized I don't I
can't afford it. CCS college of Creative
Studies in Detroit. Detroit maybe not the
best area to live in, but there's car industry
there, right, for GM. And in Asia, we have Hong Geek
in Korea and South Korea. We have Guangzhou
University of Fine Arts in China, and I
probably missed a few. There's a few more,
especially in China, and I'm not clear about Japan. I think Japan design is a bit different anyways,
the way it works. But in China,
there's a few more. I think in Beijing,
there's one, and in Shanghai, there's
one as well, right. Um just a warning
US is ridiculous. If you want to study there,
if you're in the US, it's nothing new for you, but for someone who's
not maybe in the US, it's ridiculous because Okay, so if you're not from
the US, you need a visa. It's not that easy to
get to pay for it, it's one thing and you
need to apply for it. And for some citizens
of some countries, it's almost impossible or very, very hard
to get that visa. And it's very expensive. We're talking like the hundreds of thousands of
dollars to study this. Not tens of thousands,
not thousands, hundreds of thousands of
dollars to study there. And they do offer scholarship
programs as well. I think a lot of
universities do, but the scholarship
programs like, Yeah, we cover 50% of your study. And you think it's awesome,
but it's like you're still paying 50 grand
a year to study there. So take it easy, right? Alright. That's it for the schools. You know
what to look out for. Best to do your
research earlier, like Google the school, maybe the one you like
you think is good. Look at the graduates,
look like graduation show, degree show, and look at the projects and
have a look, right? Maybe look in the
background, also, especially when
it's carventry and stuff like this. Look
at the background. You look at the
nice flashy, cool projects and models,
and look in the back. Are there some crappy
ones there, you know? If yes, m. But generally, the harder it is to get into a school, the better the school. And if there's
schools which I can recommend, it's for sure. If we're talking
Europe, it's for sure. The German guys are really good. The French ones are really good. In the UK, commentary
you can do, but the schools not great, so you need to really
push yourself. And I'll talk about how
to study in school, no matter what school you're in, and that should guarantee
you that you come out one of the best
of the class, right? So the school can be bad,
but you can also be good, just sing. All right.
5. 4. Before School: Hello, and welcome to
school or rather preschool. So you've decided to do it and you want
to go the journey. Cool, man. It's gonna be It's gonna be
cool. I can promise. It's gonna be tough,
but it's gonna be cool. So this is also very important. You know you're going
to go to school. You've done your research,
you know what it's like. You're like, Okay, I'm willing
to take this challenge on. And now, how do you
prepare for school? Super important, super,
super, super important, because you will already
get used to the process. You will already be
in that mode of, I have to practice, right? So what's very important at the beginning is to
polish your skills. As much as you can, if
you have some free time. I mean, don't completely stop
living your life, you know, still meet with friends
and do what you like outside of this. You know,
it's not just about this. But do polish your skills before you go to school.
Don't do anything, right? So drawing, sketching, tryout
rendering, design thinking, try to be creative, try to find some method that works for
you how to get creative. And not just cars
you that observe technology, observe the world, what's going on in the world, in terms of tech, in terms of
trends and stuff like this. And try to think, you know, think what
could be the future? What could be the
future and how could it affect car design or
design in general. I think that's a very
important thing. And shameless plug,
if you want to learn sketching or anything
like this and learn properly how to do proportions, perspective, shading,
stuff like this. I have a bunch of
courses here on here and just search for it or click on my name and
you'll be able to find them. Like I said, in this course, they all be any drawing, but I have plenty of other
courses where you can learn a bit of drawing to get you started if you're
completely clueless, or if you just want to
get an insight into it. Okay. And another thing that people always talk
about is software. So oftentimes I hear
people ask, Oh, no, what software do you use or what software do
you need to learn? And that's only secondary. There's a few core softwares which you absolutely
need to know. Not everything in that
software, but, like, a few functions and master
it really well, right? Some people ask me, what
kind of three D do you use? Do you use Blender?
Do you use Rhino? Do you use solid Works? Like, Okay, so for two
D, it's very simple. You need to do Photoshop. Absolutely, you
need to know that. Absolutely. If you
don't know that, you're screwed, you
need to know Photoshop. Illustrator, you
also need to learn. It's good to know to prepare portfolio
and stuff like this. Maybe in design. It'll be in Design for preparing portfolios
and stuff like this. But Illustrator mostly for
graphics because you're going to be at some point doing stickers on cars and
stuff like this. And Illustrator
is good for that. Vector graphics, right? You can scale it and it's
going to lose quality. And anything beyond
that is a plus. So there's also other two
D apps like sketchbook, for example, maybe you have an iPad and you want
to sketch on it. Great. You can do
that. Awesome. Do it. You can use Procreate,
can use sketchbook. All these things are a plus, but the fundamentals Photoshop. And unfortunately, it costs
money and a lot of it. So you can Google
on how to get it. Yeah, you know what I mean. And then in terms of three D, there's a few important ones
that you need to learn. Some of them are
not 100% required, let's say, but a huge plus. Also, for you later, if you get into the industry,
it's awesome to know. So alias is the classic
one, Autodesk alias. It's basically
modeling software. You can model in nerves, which is curve based and
intersection and trimming and adding radius in between services and stuff.
It's very complicated. I hope your school
teaches you that, but you can maybe
watch some tutorials before and try to
learn it yourself, at least to use the interface
on the most basic thing you need to know alias is how to select things, how
to move things. And how to turn the car around, turn the
model around, right? It's very important because
at some time in your career, someone's going to send
you an alias model and be like, Look at
this, what do you think? Or, what they build a car that you're working on and you look at
it and you're like, ****, I don't know how
to move the damn thing. I don't know how to show
what I actually want. It's very important to
know that, for sure. Like, alias, for sure,
good thing to know. And alias also has a subdivision
modeling aspect of it, which is a bit like
blender, polymodeling. So it's more like you have you create like a
blob and you start pulling the little dots on the blob and you modify
the shape of it. Also, part of alias. Another
thing that I think nowadays, as a done you must know
is blender. It's free. You can doelod it.
It runs on anything. I even runs on an old Nokia. And it's lots of
tutorials out there. You can easily learn how
to model a lot of things. There's a donut tutorial,
maybe don't do that. I'm sure there's other tutorials in blender where you can learn how to straightaway model
something that resembles a car and you learn to use the user interface, such things. It's very good. You
need to do that. And the cool thing about blender is like I said, it's free. You have blender
kit. You can create environments and stuff you can render inside
blender is awesome. Another one that's also useful doesn't mean these
things you need to master 100%. You need to know it good
enough that you can create some cool stuff with it because when
you're a student, it's expected of you to do your own animations and your
own renderings and stuff, and later in the job, you might not do that as much or as professionally
as other people who specify who are specializing in this field in visualization
and stuff like this. But knowing things
like unreal engine and blender for
rendering is very useful because it really
ups your quality of work. Like say you have an
awesome three D model, or even one step back. You have an awesome two
D sketch and you make a nice three D model out
of it in Blender alias, and you're like, Okay,
I want to show it now. And if you just show it and take a screenshot out of alias, it looks going to
look like really bad. So you put it in
underwear engine, you create some
nice environment, volumetric lighting and stuff, and you do some
awesome animations, maybe the cars even driving and stuff like this.
You will see it. You will see people do it, and these guys are typically really, really good, and they
push. They don't stop. They're like, I want
to get the most out of this design and show it
in the best way possible. So that's definitely
something you need to learn. All these touch
on. Not that hard. Unwel engine, you just
download the program, open it. You go to YouTube. I mean, nowadays,
there's all sorts of tutorials for free out there. You go to YouTube and you
search for how to do this, how to create a
high quality image, how to solve the problem
reflection with glass, how do I get
materials, you know, how do I set up the camera
and stuff like this? You'll find it. There's
so much stuff out there, and it really doesn't take that much effort to
learn it and to do it. You just have to
do it. Just look it up and do it. No excuses. And Autodesk rewrite is
also a very standard tool, very easy tool to at least, as a design designer, to create some good issue looking
images out of it. To make we're professionally, is a different story, though, but to get started and stuff, to put a model in and get some
nice shading and tracing, re red is very, very good. Alright. So another
thing is to be ahead. Of course, there's going to be professionals out there who
are better than you, right? And I know you're just
preparing for school, but this is maybe something
to keep in mind overall. There's going to be people that are better at you
at certain things. And especially when you're
preparing for school, you should not look at other students or the
people next to you. You should look at
other people above you. The professionals, the students who are doing very good stuff. There's so much
resources nowadays. In the past, there weren't,
so it was much harder. Nowadays, there's no excuse anymore to not look at the
professionals and say, ****, these guys
are really good. I am not good. I need to
do something about it. Okay, so look at these kind of high quality content of professionals and look
at the technique. Zoom in, see how it's sketch. Don't just look at
it on your phone. Like, Oh, that's cool. I don't know how to do Zoom in and see the strokes,
maybe the roughness. How did they create
these reflection, try to understand it
and learn from them. You can copy. You can
try to copy the style. Don't copy the design.
Please don't do that. Copy the style. You can
color pick the colors. You can experiment with the background,
change it up a bit, but don't copy the perspective and the design or don't
even use a Ander. Some people do that. Look at it, try to understand it,
and try to replicate it. And then because you learn in the process and you probably use different brushes
or something, it's going to look
like you did it. It's not going to look
like their sketch, right? Well, I'm trying to
copy one to one. It's also not possible, I think, and yeah, imitation is good,
but don't copy, right? And just know where
you need to go to. Look at the level
of quality quality of the level of quality of work here and realize that's
where you need to get to and then work towards it. And this design job is one of these things like artists
artistic stuff anyways. The more time you put into
it, the better you'll get. It's an automatic procedure. If you stop drawing,
you're not going to get bad drawing, right? If you keep drawing
every day, every day, every day, and you look
at your previous sketch, it's automatically
going to get better because you will learn automatically in
the process of it. You get muscle memory and stuff. Your eye will develop.
And I promise you, even if you don't put in active effort to improve your sketch, which you absolutely
should by the way, otherwise you're going
to improve very slowly. And you look back at the
sketch you did last week, you're going to think, Oh, wow, that's so bad, and the new stuff is so much better. But I can be even better.
Okay. And that's it.
6. 5. In School: Alright, now you're in school in the middle
of the whole thing. Now, there's a few things in school which are very important. In the end, this is
your incubation point, your incubator for
becoming a really, really good designer because now you're surrounded by really, really ambitious
people, designers, some of them are going
to be very good. Some of them are going
to be not so good. And I think it's
important to form a very, very, very good bond with
the right people in school. Of course, you don't want to be not nice to the people who are not so good.
It's what I mean. What I mean is to see who is actually trying to
push just like you are. And most schools are going to
have quite a lot of people, and everyone in the end is going to end up in
some kind of group, and you want to be in the
group where everyone's pushing really hard and trying
to learn from each other, and you kind of push
each other to a very, very high level because
that's the people you learn from aside from your teachers. But I would say
you learn the most from the best guys
and girls at school, and you learn a little bit
from the teachers and from the rest of the people
that is going to be doing the same thing
in their group, right? And they might be looking at your group and be like,
What are these guys doing? Are they so good? You want
to be in this group, right? Sure you want to find
the best guys and girls. And anyways, if you already know this much and you
want to push hard, you want to become
a car designer. You're going to be
in this mindset, and there's going to be
people in that mindset, too, and you're going
to get along just fine. It's going to be
okay. Not everyone. You know, I'm not
saying you're going to best friends with everybody
there, but it doesn't matter. I can promise, though,
that some people in this group will become some of your best buddies because you have
so much in common. You have the same drive.
You have the same ambition, and you value each other very well throughout the whole
journey. You help each other. And later, when you're
in the industry, you can even help
each other find jobs, and maybe someone asks like,
Hey, do you know this guy? Yeah, yeah, I used
to study with him. He's really, really good guy
and really good designer. And you can say that, right? Very, very, very cool and
fun environment, positive. You learn from each
other. It's easy go. You just kind of learn by doing. And if you look at over the
shoulder of your friend, he's doing something and doing a really good like, Hey,
dude, how do you do that? Show me. And I'm sure he
will show you, right? And you'll look at the same
as you like, Hey, dude, you were listening to a podcast about Blender or you did
some software tutorial, Can you show me what you learned real quick? I have
this problem with mine. I don't know how to do
it. So it goes bouncy, left and right, back and forth, and you're going to
really become much, much better very quickly because you have access to
the other person's knowledge, and he has access to
your knowledge, as well. And if you don't
do that, I mean, worst case scenario, let's say, you're in a corner by yourself,
you're going to go under. You know, the people who
are in the group are going to be much better
than you, much quicker. And also, if you're stuck in
a group of, let's say, okay. It's not a popularity
contest in school, right? If you're with the cool
kids that always are out partying and they're having
a good time in school, they're doing the modules,
but they're not good. You're going to be in a
group of the popular kids, and you're not going to be
good designer at the end. Unfortunately,
that's how it works. And don't be afraid to approach people because you're
going to have to do that later in the
industry as well. So learn how to talk to
people, be positive. Like I said, don't make
enemies. Don't piss people off. Just be a nice person and try to learn from the
best, and it will be fine. Okay. The next thing is that you shouldn't forget
to be competitive. By that I don't mean
to compete with your friends on a
personal level. Embedd than him, you know, this kind of stuff
don't do that. Um, but do compete with your friends for things
like competitions. That's the place to compete. Not in school, trying
to one up each other. That's not how it works.
That doesn't matter anyway. In the end, it's this kind
of stuff that matters. You can write this on your CV, and for later applying, for example, at the companies you did these competitions with, you can apply for
a job orentership. It's going to
really help because you've kind of proven
yourself as a student, right? So there's these
design competitions like the psyche
design challenge. They still do it every
year. I'm pretty sure. Pintorina did one, Polster
do it on Instagram. And I pre JC also do it now. And you can do that
as a group. You all work on it together and you try to get the
best out of it for everybody, not
just you, right? Don't suddenly be like,
Okay, now competition time, I'm going to ignore
my friends now. Don't do that. Sit
together, do it together, and the chances are pretty high that one of you guys
or multiples of you guys will end up winning or becoming finalists or something
of these competitions. And you're going to get
exposure on social media. Your work is going to
be I mean, either way, if you win or become finalists, your work is going to
be pretty damn good and it's going to be shown and people will
know who this is. And don't be afraid
if it doesn't work because in university,
for example, in school, there's multiple
years, typically three to four years
of university, right? And that means you have at least three to
four chances to do this. And it's also a good practice
challenge on your own, say, you finish your
university assignment, but you want to do more, which you should and should do more always, your
own side project. And suddenly there's
a competition, and the university
doesn't care about it, but you stood on
the side and say, university have a module
which you need to work on, and you have also this
competition going. You should focus on
the competition, not on the union module, get the Uni module out of the way. You know, the grade doesn't
matter in the end anyways. Do it as good as you can.
If you love the project, of course, put in
the best you can. I'm not saying don't do
well, do it well as you can, but do focus on the competition because that's more
important and it's going to get you further than the Uni project because oftentimes you get
some kind of reward, you're going to
win something and it's like an internship or
like a visit to the studio. You get to talk to
the professionals, you get to experience
the studio. It's really, really
good. Speaking on a personal level, I did that. In first year of
university, I was very, very lucky to have taken part in the psyche
design challenge. It was in 2019. And
we did it as a team. Me and my friends,
and two of us. We actually made
it to the finals, and we did the internship
in London. They invited us. We went to London to
their design studio, and we ended up taking
first and second place. My friend got first place.
I got second place. And they flew us to Shanghai. They made hard models for us, and we stayed at a hotel
for two or three days. It was awesome. Just saying,
do it. Don't be stupid. Just do it and focus on it, and you build a relation with the with the companies
as well, and overall, it just shows that
you are competitive, which is good because no one
wants somebody who is not competitive in this
industry and just kind of noodles around that
doesn't do its best, because being competitive
means doing your best, observing the
people next to you, not necessarily your opponents, but observing the
people next to you and trying to do better
or different, right? And the last point of being in school and what to
do is to reach out to pros. I mean, the whole design
competition thing is part of it. There's a whole other side
of reaching out to Ps. I'm sure you've done it if you're already interested
in school or something, you have looked at
people's stuff on social media for sure, for sure. And is this, famous designer or some kind of
designer who's very good, who you like, adore you admire him or her, and you want
to reach out to them. You want to ask them
for advice. Do that. Absolutely do that. Same with LinkedIn
and stuff like this. But do know that they will see that you're
a student and they probably get
a lot of messages. So you need to be very
friendly and be very, like, professional about
it. Don't be cocky. You know, some people
go like, hello sir, please suggest design or please
suggest design feedback. Don't do that. Right?
Be like, hello. Hi. My name is So and so. I really admire your work. I've been working
on this project, and I would love for you to help me out and
give me some feedback. Something like this, right? You can also ask if
you feel confident enough you've done some
work that you're very happy with to push a bit. Also very kind, professional, like, hello, yeah,
I adore your work. It's very nice. I really like
what you guys are doing. Look, I have this portfolio. I'm studying and I would like
to try for an internship. Do you know maybe someone
who I can talk to, who I can send my stuff to? And you do that and you do
it with a lot of people. But be personal about
it, make it personal. Don't send the same message to everybody and just
change your name. Actually talk about their work and stuff. Be honest, right? And then that's how you get
internship, typically, right? You add these people, you
make yourself visible. Don't be shy to not
show your work online. Some people are very shy. They're afraid people
will steal their ideas. Nobody's going to
steal your ideas. Nobody as a student is going to steal from students like this.
It's not going to happen. And if they do steal from you, that means you're
better than them, and everyone will know that you are the original
and they copied you. So even better, right? Don't worry about
it. Um and, yeah, collect like a list of
people, maybe even a list of email addresses you can
send stuff to. All right.
7. 6. Different Jobs: Hello. Now let's talk
about some jobs. We touched on it briefly that I know I keep saying
car designer, but by that, I do include
all of these jobs. And like I mentioned
in the introduction, car design, car designer
is not just one job. It's a lot of jobs. It's a team effort
in any respect, in any way, it's a team effort. And you can think about it
in this way that when you construct a product as complex as a car
when you develop it, there's hundreds of thousands of people working on
engineering teams, you know, doing safety and
suspension tuning, power train, all
this kind of stuff, it comes together, and design is only a part of it, right? It kind of brings everything together from the stuff that
you can see, let's say. And, of course, in design, even if you're exterior
designer or lead designer, you're not going to
be doing it yourself because you don't know what the engineer next to you knows, and you're going
to work together with the engineer
next to you to make the car possible because some things are just not
possible in reality, right? Like, Okay, I want it
as a designer this way. But wait, we need the front of the car to not be so sharp because when
you hit somebody, the safety guy, will lose
his job or something. You're going to kill
the guy and you have some regulation that the
front can't be this sharp, and then the safety guy will
know it and you will learn about it together with the
safety engineer or something, and you have to
change your design. So not anything goes, and you're going to
have to work with other people kind of kind of yeah, design
the vehicle, right? And most of the time, it can happen also that uh you kind of do a
mashup of design. So maybe the front theme of this guy is
better than yours, but they like the
rest of your cast, so they put a front theme
of that guy on your theme, and then you work
together on it. It can be very messy. It's not that easy
always saying. And I'm roughen here. So let's have a look
at some creative jobs. Creative jobs are jobs
where you are working as a person that comes up with creative new ideas in terms
of looks and volume, graphic. So you are the one that comes up with the next look
of a car, right? You're going to be doing
lots of sketching, doing some modeling. Maybe you do your own modeling, you work with a modeler, or you do some clay
modeling, right? So you have jobs like
exterior design. That's a very well
known one where you sketch the
outside of the car. General in general. Then you have interior designer. Same thing for the
inside of the car, like the dash, the IP, the steering wheel,
the door carts, the overall theme,
all this stuff. And then you have also
in each of these teams, you have a component designer. Component designer, you can
understand as, for example, someone who's specialized
in doing wheels, someone who specialized
in doing lights. Because if you look at
some of the new cars, the lights are very complex and they have design
of their own. I put one here from JC. You can see the source
there on the bottom right. This is also part of design, being a component designer. On the interior,
it's the same thing. You're going to be
doing switches. You're going to
maybe be doing knobs and vents and little
things here and there. I also need attention because the overall interior designer
cannot do all of this. It's going to be too
much work for them. You're going to be
working together. So if you're an exterior
guy and you're working with a wheel or the light design, you're going to work together. On it, but he's going to
be doing most of the work. You can maybe have Look,
I like this sketch. What do you think about
this slight thing? The signature and your
manager likes it, and you have to put it in reality because when you just do a quick sketch on
an exterior and you do a line for graphic, of course, the three dimension
is going to be different, and you're going to
have to add lots of complex little details to
make it look cool, right? And that's the job of
the component designer. Then you have a UXUI designer. That's like everything
you see on the screen, all the graphics, all the
animations, it has to work. It needs to be usable
when driving or under certain
driving conditions. Imagine the guy who designs
the interface on iPhone or on a tablet or
a washing machine, except in this case,
it's four cars, also very creative job,
also very cool job, right? You can do so much
with it. And nowadays, with so many screens
in the cars, it's a very, very
challenging job. And then the last one
in creative jobs is a color and trim designer because a car is made
out of materials. I also posted a picture
here on the bottom left you're going to be looking
at different materials, different textures, paints,
colors, this kind of stuff. It's also very
important. You need to have an eye for that, too. It's also a direction
you can go, right? It's kind of like a bit
fashion design as well. So people who come from
fashion, they can do this, too. So it doesn't
necessarily have to be coming from
automotive design. Very, very important job, too, because I'm sure you've
all sat inside maybe a bit more a cost effective car, let's say, and it's a
bit plasticky, right? And you sit in something a
bit nicer, and you're like, This is really nice because
of the materials, the colors. And it's very important
that you have a nice balance of
everything, right? You can't just put
anything in the car. It needs to be made
out of something and you need to have somebody that needs to decide where
to put certain materials. Okay. Now let's go
on to three D jobs. The D jobs are modeling
jobs, basically, mostly. So you have the
studio cast modeler, computer aided sign modeler. That's somebody who would
model design proposals. So for example, you're
a creative designer, exterior or interior, you do a sketch and
management likes it, they select it and they want
to see it in three D, right? And maybe you cannot model or you need to model
it better than you can and you work together with a studio cast modeler who does it professionally to put
your idea in three D. Um, and maybe it gets even made into a model or something like an
actual model you can touch. I'm going to review
it, because oftentimes a sketch is just a promise. It's just a two D thing. It's not a three D thing. And to translate it 23 is the
first step, right? A second step, the first
step is two D sketch, second step, translating into
three D, see how it works. Because when you're
working on a car, you're going to have a
package, engineering package, which is the technical
restrictions underneath. You cannot make the wheel
super huge or super small. There's a limit. And
the cast modeler will have to more or
less stay true to that. So if you sketch a
car with huge wheels, but they like your
theme, you have to put the theme on a car
with smaller wheels. Realistically, you can't cheat so much, right? That's his job. And a lot of freedom, it
doesn't have to be perfect. It can be a bit, you know, ambiguous, a
bit vague in some areas. It's not finished. But it's
more like exploring design. It's a very creative
job as well, because you can have
influence as a modeler, too, because you will have to solve some problems together
with a designer where he didn't think about this part or it's unclear on the
sketch or something. And then there's a
class A modeler, which is more like you
do the finished stuff. So you kind of take the model
from the studio modeler, take a scan from a hard
model and you perfect it. You make it as nice as possible. You make it manufacturable. There are certain
rules about class A. I'm not clear on all of them, but it needs to be
manufacturable and it has to be able to be sent to
engineering and they need to be able to
make a car out of it. Completely different
job than studio cast modeler because
as a class A, you're kind of just
straightening things and building things to
production standards. And there's lots
of rules like gaps and radiuses that need
to be considered, and you need to know these,
and not anyone can do that. You need to train for it.
Whereas Studio cast modeler, you can actually go do this job with a design degree
if you can model decently. You can do that. Don't need to know the ins and
outs and class A stuff. Third job is a clay model. That's hands on. So, you know, I'm sure you've
seen clay models. It's like this industrial plasticen thing
material that you can scrape and you can
sculpt it. That's a job. It's slowly, I would
say going a bit less. I wouldn't say
it's dying because many people are
switching to digital. It's kind of what the
studio cast modeler does, but on the real model
with a hand, right? Also very cool, artistic, right? You're really holding tools
with a hand and scraping, creating shapes according
to some designer, right? You're going to be working
together with designers. You're not going to be
doing your own stuff. If you do your own stuff and you go away from
what the designer, the selected designer
proposal is, they're not going
to be very happy, and you're probably
going to get fired. So you're going to be working on someone else design
together, right? Similar to studio cast model. You're not going to be
doing your own design, you're going to be working
with a designer on it. The 43 jobs a
visualization artist. That's like doing animation. Maybe internally. I mean, the boss is coming and you
have like three or four cars. You need to show them, and
he needs to select one. So it's a three D model and
you put it in animation, you create a scene, and you show it to the boss.
That's internally. Or you do like press images, the very fancy glitzy images of the car in a sunset
and stuff like this. Animations, that's
for the press. That's official releases. You also do this kind
of stuff, right? Like, these really cool
when a car gets released, you see these really nice shots. Oftentimes, it
looks so realistic, but it's actually
a three D work. It's not real. It looks
like a real shot video, but it's not. You can
pay attention to it. But most of the car like advertisements,
they are not real. They are actually done by
three D visualization artist. And lastly, you
have research jobs where you do like
design trend research. You research what functions
of design may be important. For example, oh, I
don't know, people are starting to wear
hats or something, and we need to make
the roof higher. You know, stuff like this,
design is also a job. Strategy, design strategy and marketing is all kind
of melts together. What can you do? You know,
Design marketing, maybe, okay, how do we communicate this new design
language to the public? Like, how do we explain it? Give it a name, give
the story, you know, this kind of stuff. As a job. Um, exactly. So we went through this. Oh, yes, here are some
examples of cast. On the left, that
porsche Tikhan thing, that's alias nerves modeling. You can see the patches.
That's something you would do as a cast model or as a class A
modeler, as well. And on the right, you see a clay modeler
working on a one to one full scale on a BMW
six series Grand Coop, I think that is proposal. And on the bottom, you have a visualization artist image
of a Genesis sentia concept, and it's a three D
environment. Looks very cool. This is maybe something
you would see during an internal presentation. And lastly, you have
three search jobs. Like I said, you're going
to be doing lots of, like, thinking, trend research,
market research, maybe going to be talking
to real people and showing them a model of a car internally that you
did without a brand. It's called Clinic,
and you'd ask them, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? Do you like this feature? Do
you not like this feature? Okay. So to sum up these
different jobs in card design, it's all about a journey, right? You have to discover
your strength. You'd have to discover
what you like. Maybe you go into
school thinking, Hey, I want to be exterior
and you discover I'm actually better at interior,
and I enjoy it more. Or you enjoy the hands on
experience with clay or you enjoy thinking and
doing posted notes on various different ideas
and stuff like this. It's not just one
card design job. There's lots of jobs in it, and you need to find
out what you like.
8. 7. Internships & Companies: Okay, let's not talk about internships and approaching
companies and professionals. So you're in school, I assume, and you're looking
for an internship. It's very, very important to pursue one as
much as you can. They're an absolute must. People who don't have
an internship on their resume on their
CV and try to look for a job will have a huge disadvantage versus
someone who does or who did. So basically, it's
a must, right? It's absolutely a must. And the reasons are you need to build a relationship
with the companies. You need to prove yourself.
You need to get to know the people because it's
a very small world. And once you have your
foot in the industry, it's going to be very,
very helpful to know somebody and to learn
from them anyways, right? So internships are
absolute must. And the way to do
it is you have to, like I mentioned
before, absolutely, show yourself on various
important social media like Instagram,
Bhands, LinkedIn. These are the platforms
where designers hang out and they look at new stuff, and they get inspired, and they look at other
people's work, right? So there you really
want to be present. Don't be too present. Like don't overpost
or something this, but show your best side
because you're going to be judged on your
worst stuff, right? So don't show your bad stuff. Show your best stuff there, and you have to send your
portfolio everywhere you can. So you can approach
people on Instagram, even nowadays, you can
send them a message, professional designers,
ask them about internships and
stuff like this in a professional way, like
I mentioned before. Don't be idiot about it. Just be very professional and be like, Hey, I
really like your work. I really like what
your company is doing. I'm looking for internship. I'm studying here.
It would be great if you could forward my
work or if you could give me some feedback or
something like this and send your portfolio on all these
platforms like on Instagram, I'm not sure Bhands you
can send people messages, and I don't think
people look either on LinkedIn for sure, add people, um and then
message them very friendly, very professional, very quick. Don't send them a
huge wall of texts. They will not read it
and they will think you're very talky,
talky guy, right? And also, maybe don't send
your portfolio immediately. You should have already
some stuff on your profile. S on Instagram or Linktn,
you have already some posts. They might have seen
it already, and you message them without
sending your portfolio, and they'll remember
As this guy, yeah, I've seen your work is
actually pretty good. And then if
everything's fine and they're willing to talk
to you or something, sometimes they just
don't reply, which is okay. They are
very busy people. Then they like, Yeah, sure, send me your portfolio, and
then you send your portfolio. Don't just send them everything
in a huge wall of text. They will probably
not look at it. And absolutely be
proactive. You have to be. If you're not proactive, you're basically giving away
free opportunities. The people who are proactive will be getting
the opportunities, and you're missing out. So
you have to write to people. You can even go to design events where there's like meetups, for example, concept house, do these design events. If you're a student,
you can go to these events. You should. Maybe in your city or
something, usually, if you're studying at
a place where there's design school and car companies,
there will be an event. So go to these car
design events if you can and start to mingle and talk to people. It's
going to be great. And if you can't, of course, everyone wants to get into OEMs. That's like BMW Audi, these big known companies, Chrysler for the car companies. Everyone wants to get
into these companies. If you cannot, if you
don't manage to get into these companies, it's not bad. You can also find
other companies, and there's some very
well known ones. I'm sure you heard about them. Example, Pin forena is
a well known agency. They did design
work for Ferrari in the past and Fats
and very good stuff. There's also like companies
like Munich Design, just as a few
examples, studio Corba in Germany, Hotel design, Idelhofen, D Automotive,
Ashemer in UK, Futura, in UK, Technicon, EDAC. These are all companies that do design work for
big companies. So you can imagine
going in there, they're going to have
a few exterior guys, few interior guys working
on projects, I don't know, BMW, for Ford, for VW
or something like this. And you're going to learn also a lot from these companies, and it's going to be, let's say, a bit easier to get
into these companies in the beginning and
learn something. And it's also going to
be a nice environment because you're going to see
a lot of things happening, and it's going to be a
different viewpoint on car design than being
at the big OEM company. But in the end, it's internship. The internship is super
important because this is the first step
for you in the industry. And once you're in, you can celebrate
Yippie Hora you're in. You've done the first step, and it's also very important
what to do once you're in because once you're in a let's say you can
still mess it up, but I think you probably won't because if you got this
far, you won't mess it up. And the way to do it is
basically like in school, you have to learn
as much as you can. But maybe now even
more so because the people around you are all
people who are very, very, very good, top of their class, top designers, and they
got there the same way. You will be getting
there, let's say, and they went through
it and they will have polished their skills like crazy and worked on life projects, and they will know so much that you will not be
able to learn in school. So I think maybe, let's say you learn 50%
in school, sorry, less. You learned less
than 50% in school. You learn, let's say, 30, 40%
in school and all the rest, you learn in internships in the industry later before
you start working, right? So learn as much as possible as you can from the
professionals, be a sponge. And be nice, you know, try to be proactive,
approach everybody. It's like, Hey, I'm So and so. I'm an intern here.
Nice to meet you. Can I have a look
at what you do? Maybe you can give me
some tips and tricks, and you will learn things that
you just won't in school. It's going to be incredible.
You're going to have your eyes wide open and
be like, Holy Holy crap. That's incredible. And you're probably going to make
some friends as well, because, of course, you're
similar kinds of people. You have similar
kinds of interests. You're pursuing
the same passion. So you can form some
nice friendships, keep in touch. It's
very important. Maybe later after
the internship, you can ask to do a thesis
or come back later for work. Or maybe the person you
met, the nice person, goes to a different company, and you're interested in
working with that company, and you can ask that
person again, right? And once you're in,
you can also peek into various different aspects of the job and try a few
different things, right, not just this one
particular side of it. Maybe you go in and you
discover holy crap. Interior part in this
company is amazing. I'm going to learn
more about that, even though before you were
more focused on exterior. And a very important thing is don't be an idiot.
Don't be cocky. Some people they go
into some people they go into companies and they act like
they know everything, and they try to
correct everybody. Very bad thing to do what you're going to come
across as hostile, you're going to come across
as a know it all as, I know better than you guys. You know, you guys are not good. I'm better than you, even though you're a student
and you're going to think, like, What's this
idiot trying to do? Don't be a sketch
monkey, really. Try to correct people's
other people's design. It's not good. Or like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I saw this card
that you guys said. It's ugly. I don't like it. ****. You know, Don't
say stuff like this. Be positive, learn from them,
they're better than you. Maybe you're better and
the dam at some things. That might be true, but
they're still professionals, and you definitely
don't want to offend them or don't want to attack
their ego or anything. Because imagine if
someone did that to you and you've done so much hard work to get into the industry, and some little idiot intern comes and tells you
you're not good. You're going to think
that's an idiot, and you basically ruined your career at that
company or these people. So don't do that. And here
are some examples, right? Like I said, it's not just OEMs of companies that are not OEMs. Have a look at the list.
They do various things. I'm not entirely clear either about what they do because it
changes all the time, also. P in farina, they
do their own car, but they also do design. They do design
for, like, yachts, boats, scooters, bicycles. Also, cars, they do
cars for the companies. Melich design, for example, they do or, they do like stickers. They they do graphic design. They do seats, they do
details, they do wheels. They do all kinds of stuff. And Horta design,
ulehofn studios, they do concept cars. They build the
actual show cars you see on the motor shows, even though it says
Audi or something on it was built by
these companies. They work together, and they also do design work
for other companies. So like I don't know, some
Chinese company comes to them or they want some design
sketches from external people, not just their ow
team, so they pay companies like these to
do design work for them. And the same goes for the
other companies. Okay.
9. 8. Getting Sponsored: Okay, now let's talk
about getting sponsored. It can mean lots
of things, right? When you're an intern, you're basically getting sponsored
for a company already. So they usually pay
you also as a student to learn in the company
and do some work for them. It's a great opportunity. So effectively getting
sponsored already. But we can take it one step further and get
sponsored for thesis. So thesis is when you graduate from university,
you need to do your thesis. Your final project, your
final major project, it's called in some schools, and you can do it in
two ways, basically. You can do it either in school as your own
personal project, and you have like a topic. And you discuss it with
your professor and you do a project based
upon that topic. But you can also do
it in the industry. So imagine you
are, I don't know, an intern at VW and they're happy with you and
you want to talk to them about doing a thesis at VW. That's possible. So you stay with the company or you find a new company, it
doesn't matter. And you do in their
name a project, which is going to be your
final major project. So let's say you
create a concept idea and you discuss it
with your professor, I don't know the
next VW pickup truck for 2050 that can also fly. I'm just going to say
something stupid. And you have this topic. Your professors okay with it, VWs okay with it, and you basically do your own project while
being inside the company. That will be the ideal
scenario because then you can say that you did the
thesis at the company. They will have
resources for you. Um, during your thesis, they will maybe offer you some help when it comes to modeling. They might offer you
some help when it comes to design feedback anyway, you're going to have some
mentor that's going to help you with the design
and giving you feedback. And also they might sponsor your physical model at the end, which is actually very expensive if you want to pay
for it yourself. So let's say you do it yourself, the project and you
have your three D data and you want to get your model made three D printed
or something, and you contact
companies about it, and it's going to be costing you a few thousand dollar for sure. I would say anything
from $3,000 upwards. The really nice models you
see on the Green shows, for example, the ones
where you can have an interior and an exterior
and you have glass. Maybe even if you
have LED lights, some of these models can
cost up to $100,000, and I'm sure you don't want to spend that yourself or you would even consider spending that yourself on a model for
your final project. There will be people who
are rich enough to do that. Usually these people
will have forked out the cash to go to
these expensive schools, and for them, it
doesn't matter anyways. But ideally, getting
it done in a company, having the company
do the model for you is the best case scenario
because the company's money, and they get exposure
for it, as well. And usually, these are the best models you can see on the Degree Show
because nobody else will have the resources to do such a nice project with all the resources that a
company can provide you, including software, including
resources for animations, textures, and any ways
of professional help. So that's ideal. And typically, if everything goes well and the industry is at
a good time and maybe there's a vacancy and they know that you are
about to graduate, that means you're unlocked. You have been unlocked to be
hired at a company, right? And if you do
everything very well, you can even slide
directly into a job, and that'll be the best case
scenario because you have secured yourself
a car design job, which is what you wanted, right? It's a dream job in the end, and being able to start it immediately after
graduating university, plus also starting it at
a big renowned company, like at an OEM, is what I'm
saying, is a dream job. It's the best case
scenario for everybody. So if you can manage to do
that, it will be perfect. And I think that you should
aspire to do that, as well. That's why internships
are so important. You really want to
secure that internship, really want to do so well in the internship
that they're like, Okay, we can sponsor
this guy for thesis. And typically, if a company is willing to sponsor
you for thesis, also they would consider you hiring you sooner
or later, right? So if something
opens up they, Yeah, we had this, really
good intern here. They did really well. They're a good team player.
We're going to hire him. Maybe now there's no position,
but maybe in a few months, there will be a position and we are going to
hire this person. So that's typically the
journey that you take, where you make the
jump from school to company is with
internships, right? And that's where
you get sponsored, and that's where you get
the highest probability of getting hired at
a renowned company because if you let's roll back and let's talk about
the worst case scenario, assuming you're still
a good designer, you have a really
good final project at school, you graduated. You paid a lot of
money for a model, which is not as
good as the person that got it sponsored,
but still good. And you graduate, but you won't have the
experience the person has who did do the things at a company because you don't know the people
at that company, right? You have to actively basically do the same thing you did
trying to find an internship, contact people on Linktn,
send out your portfolio, post stuff on social media, get exposure, and find a job. And typically, a company who is looking for
a new designer, will always favor
someone who they know is good because
it saves them the trouble of having to find out later that the
person is not good or having to find
out that the person personality wise, doesn't
fit into the team. So you really want to play
the card of integrating yourself into the
team very well. Okay.
10. 9. Don't Be An Idiot!: Okay, lastly, a very,
very important point. I cannot emphasize it enough
is don't be an idiot. It's a very small world,
this whole industry. People basically know
each other everywhere, and it's a very high frequency
job switching industry. So someone who works here will work in a lot of
different places later. So even for yourself, it's maybe something
to think about. You work few years
at this company. Then you go to the
other company, and this is how you
progress in career also. You jump from junior to senior, from senior to lead to
maybe manager later. And the quickest way of doing
it is by switching company. You will get an offer from a different company that offers you more money or a
more exciting role, and you might be like,
Yeah, I want to do that. And this happens to everybody. So everybody will have experience in various companies and you don't know
who they know. So if you go to, let's say
you do the internship or yea, let's say internship,
maybe not thesis, and you talk to people and you
really don't like a guy or the guy is being a bit
mean to you or something, that doesn't mean you should you should be an idiot to them. You know, there's going to
be idiots in the industry. That doesn't mean
you have to be one. And I think it's overall
not a good idea to to later become the macho
guy, the super aggressive, super strict person, very abrasive person
is maybe a good word that kind of wears everybody out and it's very
hard on everybody. You don't want to be that guy. And if you already come
across as a guy like that, like I said as an
example before, you go to company as an intern and tell everyone
they're really bad, and then you know better, you've already kind of killed your career. You don't
want to do that. You don't want to offend
people. And also, it's very important to know
that you will probably meet people who
will try to screw you they will try to
stab you in the back. They will do things or
try to do things for their own benefit at the
cost of you or other people. It's going to happen because
it's a passion job and people are sometimes willing to go quite far to
achieve their dream, even if it means to
destroy friendships or to do very dodgy things. So be aware of that. You
don't want to do that. You don't want to end up getting a job or getting a
career because of that, because this kind of behavior most likely will
bite you in the back because imagine you do something like this to somebody and
you manage to get a job and that other
person who's also going to find a design
job ends up at a company, and maybe you want to apply
at that company later, and that person knows you,
they're going to be like, No, be careful about this guy. This guy is an idiot. He did such and such horrible things
in the past to many people. You don't want this
guy on your team. And it actually happens in real life where people
who are great designers, but are very bad in terms
of personality are having trouble finding a job or
even get fired as well, right, or having trouble maybe getting promoted or
something like this. Um so you don't want to
be like that person. It doesn't mean these people don't exist like I mentioned. You might even bump into some people from
different generations. You will, of course,
bump into people from different generations,
managers, directors. They might behave a bit aggressively,
abrasively towards you. In the end, it's their job it's their decision
to be like that. I think it's very important to consider the
different generations and the way they learned as well and to understand
their behavior. If you feel like this kind of behavior affects you mentally, it might be a good
idea to switch company or to talk
to them about it. Usually that's
better idea anyways. Because in the end,
everyone is human. They probably struggle
just as much as you did. But nothing is black and white. You should never judge
a person so quickly. And in the end, if you are
the sunshine in the company, if you're positive, people will typically
treat you positive. You know, if someone gives you some bad feedback
and is a bit aggressive, you should be like, Yeah, okay, I acknowledge,
I can see that. And maybe if you don't agree, you can still say, Yeah, I
can see your point, yeah. But let me explain my point of view or
something like this. Just be professional,
be positive. Don't say mean things,
don't attack people. Based on their work
or even personally, that's even worse because
any behavior like this will really bite you later in your career,
for sure. All right.
11. 10. Last Words: Okay, we've made it to
the end, Section ten. I'm just going to
talk a little bit. Maybe if you have
some questions, don't hesitate to ask questions
in the question section. Feel free to also
add me on my socials and message me there
or ask for feedback, although I would prefer if
you asked me here and not there because then the website registers interaction is
better for me, actually. And people also get to see
the questions and maybe it answers their question
already instead of messaging me privately and
only us two can see it. Yeah, I hope you enjoyed
this little insight into how to become a car
designer professionally, how to seriously
become a car designer. I hope it changed your view on car design as a whole,
on the job situation, that it's not just one job and how risky and how difficult
and competitive it can be. It's for sure not here to
discourage you or anything. It's more here to motivate you because if you are the
right person for this job, you will get excited
by all the things we talked about here. You're going to have
the necessary tools and the necessary mindset
or the correct mindset, apologies to approach
car design as a career choice
correctly and make the most out of it and overall, have an advantage also
over people who might not have seen this course. I'm sure you will
have an advantage. Anyways, it's all
about yourself. So that's one of my last piece
of advices I can give you. It's about yourself. It's
about the energy you put in. It's not about how much money
you spend in the school. It's not about it's not about how well
you present yourself, how much you can outtk somebody. It's all about you and yourself, the hours you put in, the quality of work you present, the way you improve your
skills continuously. There's never stopping.
The sky is the limit. People, sometimes
they're good designers, but they somehow top out. They reach a dead
end in terms of skills and don't improve. That's also not something
that you should aspire. But you have the necessary if you have the correct mindset, you should be able
to continuously improve and you will become
an awesome designer. And also, as mentioned
in the course, it's not just one job. It doesn't mean you have to be sketching like
crazy or anything. You can also do
modeling. You can also do design research. You can do color
material design. There's so many options in the car design industry
that you can pursue. It's not just one job and be open to different
possibilities, right? As mentioned before, also,
you can do interior, even though you like
exterior more in the beginning. It's
not a problem. And be positive is also a thing that I can always recommend at the
end of this thing. So it's all on you in the end. It's about your passion, it's about the energy you put in. It's about being positive. You don't want to be the
negative guy, right? You want to bring
something good to this world anyways, don't you? If you want to be
a car designer, you want to create something. You want to fulfill
your dream of creating something
nice that you like, that you're proud of, but also you want it to be
successful on the market. You want people to also be
proud to own your product to enjoy using your design
that you worked on so hard. So in the end, it's always a very positive
experience for everybody. It's not about being one
upping someone next to you and being the boss and making a lot of money
or anything like this. You can tell I didn't talk
about making lots of money in card design because
that's not what it's about in the end, right? It's about following
your passion, finding a good
path for yourself, and in the end, just have
fun and enjoy yourself. And maybe if you're good
enough, if you put in the work, you might just end up
doing your dream job and designing cars or working
in the cart in industry, and it's one of
the most exciting, the coolest jobs for me, at least, cars are
anyways a hobby object, a passion object of many people. So being able to work
to create something for the future to
develop new things, to push technology and design
further is overall a very, very cool dream job to
do or dream thing to do. And if you get paid for it, if you can make a
living out of it, then it's an absolute dream. I hope you enjoy
this little course. Yeah, like I said, don't hesitate to contact
me about anything. If you have some
feedback for me also, feel free to leave a comment, and I can always
add more things. If there's a specific
topic you want me to talk about maybe about a specific
job or anything like this. Just reach out and I will
try to make it happen. All right. Take care, and maybe I'll see you soon.
Kai F.
