Le Car Design Talks: Aston Martin Chief Creative Officer Marek Reichman
On Beauty and the Bold
Marek Reichman, courtesy of Aston Martin.
For two decades Marek Reichman has shaped the look and feel of Aston Martin vehicles. As Chief Creative Officer, he has steered the quintessential British brand made iconic by the DB5 James Bond drove in the 1964 film "Goldfinger." Reichman’s tenure includes monumental designs such as the DBS, One-77, and more recently the Vanquish Volante, an elegant, yet edgy flagship convertible and the Valhalla a spicy mid-engine plug-in hybrid supercar. We spoke with Reichman during Monterey Car Week at the Quail: A Motorsports Gathering about his design ethos and what it’s like to live four years into the future.
One thing that sets your work apart is that it’s always been the most sculptural of any modern car brand. How do you do that?
That’s our language in terms of the clothing that we put over the architecture. We spend a lot of time thinking about how light is falling and reflecting over the surface. If you came into the studio, you would see these incredibly, light aggressive sections that are basically there to pick up fault. When we're creating the cars, we're looking for faults and we correct those faults. We create perfect highlights through the sectional details. When you say soft or sculptural, it is, but it's also constructed to give your mind the impression of solidity, of a mass, of a presence. Yes, it's sculptural, but there's no excess to the sculpture. It is a honed athlete in that respect.
Color for us is also really important. We see ourselves more as a fashion-oriented brand versus an automotive brand when we look at color. It’s not about shock for us. Even when something is high in contrast, it's about the subtlety of that combination and the perfection of those combinations through materiality.
With so many new tech tools that you can use in the studio, are these tools creating an element of play or is it noisy?
We have always in the automotive world, in design, enhanced new technologies — you have to. Most of the cars in my studio today are living four years into the future. I've got to be adapting and enhancing future technologies, whether that's the use of AI to generate ideas and then therefore focus the designers on something, which is a simple task that AI can cope with, like research. Ask AI, “show me all of the Aston Martin headlamps since 1930 to today.” If I give that to a designer that's three days of work to find and file. Using AI and modern technology to facilitate speed therefore give us more time to sculpt, more time to surface. I have no doubt that everyone within the industry is still using clay models in form because they are incredibly immediate in terms of your reaction. Everybody understands clay models. Whereas your interpretation of digital, yours versus mine, will be slightly different. When I put the goggles on and you do, what you see is slightly different. In CAD or in the digital world, you might see that as a softer line versus myself, so we're not talking about the same thing. Ultimately your decision process is based on a clay model. It's based on the physical element that sits in front of you and that's why you can hone and refine it. It’s a subliminal thing that most people don't know why they think the cars are beautiful. They just say, oh, it's beautiful. They have no clue why, but it's simply taking what nature would do to a surface and create it as though it had been honed by nature itself.
courtesy of Aston Martin.
How much teaching are you doing with your young designers?
A lot, but I also have to be a learner myself. If I'm not learning, there's no point bringing young designers in. They have a different viewpoint and the whole point of the studio is to allow the freedom of thinking because at some point we have to shift and move. You'll start to see over time a very different, slightly more assertive brutal language to our cars that doesn't forget the beauty. Aerodynamics lead us down different sectionality, the efficiency of cars. Valhalla is a perfect example of a car that is more performance driven in terms of its aesthetic language. If you consider that's the latest design, then that gives you an idea of the direction of travel. We use the influence of F1— how we need to get hot air off the engine compartment — so there's a direct correlation with performance and product.
Are you still teaching at Royal College of Art?
Yes, and in China as well. In China it's undergraduate and more the basics of how you become a confident thinker. What do you need to do to have confidence in your design and consistency in your designs? They're 19 and 20-year-olds that are coming in who just want to be designers, but don't truly understand what that means. It's a very different way of teaching.
In the RCA master’s program, it's far more philosophical about their thinking. In my team, four out of six exterior designers are from RCA's master’s program. They're there because they want to be car designers, but they want to think differently. All the subliminal messages that design has — form and appearance — is an attitude. A designer creates attitude. You can use words to describe it, but if you look at it you don't need the words to tell me how you feel, you just feel something. Part of our job as designers is to make you feel something. Shapes basically are creating a formed opinion in your mind about something.
“Most of the cars in my studio today are living four years into the future.”
At this stage in your career, where are you looking for inspiration. Has it shifted?
It always shifts. Now there is far more collaboration, there are far more companies being bold and brave. You have to look at the consistency of different sectors. I look more now at the world of collaboration between artists, musicians, fashion, what the consumer is now willing to consume versus before. One of the big shifts I've made is about our consumers, because I don't any longer consider age as an important part of the consumer. It's about attitude and the collabs that are going on around the world, the world of watches and sneakers, musicians, streetwear, street fashion, and places like Kith. You can walk into Kith and there are t-shirts for 500 bucks. About 10 years ago, we would not talk to a consumer that's walking into Kith, whereas now we have to say, hold on, that's now at the pinnacle of attitude. Our cars have to be more aware of trends. They have to more aware things that are changing in the world and therefore if you stay in touch with that, you're more likely to be relevant. In Miami and in Tokyo, we're developing and creating architecture as well. That’s helpful for thinking about the future of product. There was quite a famous music producer who was recently there and sent me a message saying, I'm in Miami at your masterpiece. It's amazing. Some of that will find its way into the cars — materiality on the inside, color combos.
What are you most excited about at the moment?
I think it's always for designers what's next. I'm in 2028, 2029 at the studio right now. That excites me more than anything, the love of automotive is there. It's attitude, not age. It's all the way from the 12-year-olds who love cars, to those people who continue to live longer and drive longer. It's such an exciting phase. There are more new startup car companies that ever before.
If I'm in the V&A museum, I'm looking at furniture that has been designed for hundreds of years. Cars are really young in this scheme of designed objects in our world. The 20th century is not much time.
I find fascination as a creative. You consider music. Every time we hear something new, it's based on the same structure of notes. There's nothing new, but we hear newness. I think for cars now, we're just beginning. The unexpected is what excites me about the future. For ourselves, you will start to see some of the new aesthetics will be unexpected, but always beautiful.
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