The Man Who Designs Icons, Ian Callum CBE | Extraordinary Life Stories

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0:57Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist. You know, it all started with this determination before I went to school. My first day at school, I'll never forget it. I was five years old. I took a drawing to my teacher. I said, please miss when I grow up. I'm going to be a car designer. Tell me, who is Ian Callum? Ian Callum is a person who's always looking to the future, sometimes painfully, answering the questions of a very young boy. Are you good enough? Can you do this? Are you sure you want to be doing this. The most beautiful car that you want to drive and we're going to go for lunch now, what's that car?

1:29Got to bring up the DB7. Talk me through the design of that. There must be a part of your heart that's got Jaguar in it and we've just had this recent marketing campaign that's backfired on them massively. How do you feel about it? We live in interesting times in the car world. Yeah. A lot of designers saw themselves as artists. I'm going to shock the world. Well that's all very well if you're putting a painting up somewhere and you want to like bacon or someone like that then wow I'm not sure about that but it's hard you can't do that with a motor car it's irresponsible. You've reminded me Enzo Ferrari when he was asked what his favorite car was.

2:07Probably the next one. Yeah that's that's my natural answer.

2:22Sorry to interrupt. I've never asked this before, but if you can subscribe and follow, that will allow me to keep bringing extraordinary guests onto the show. Now let's get back to it.

2:35Tell me, who is Ian Callum? Ian Callum is a designer. He's spent his whole life designing and chasing the next design, really. Predominantly cars. I love designing full stop. I love looking at architecture, all sorts of different things. They inspire me, but predominantly my life has been 40, 45 years of designing real cars. and Ian Callum is a person who's always looking to the future sometimes painfully because you just don't know what it's going to be but also answering the questions of a very young boy what were those questions? can you design cars? are you good enough? can you do this? are you sure you want to be doing this?

3:27and I owe it to that let's call it a seven or eight year old to fulfill that dream. And it's always in my head, you know, it's that eight year old, does he approve? Where did those questions come from? What was the influence? Do you know, it's really strange. I think I fell in love with cars very, very young. And I fell in love with drawing, which is your language, it's your tool. At a very young age, So the two came together. My father wasn't that interested. My mother wasn't that interested. But my grandfather, who was a church minister, loved cars. I think he must have influenced me. Sadly, he died when I was quite young.

4:08But I remember he used to take me around all the car showrooms, including to see my first E-Type, of course. And I think he must have influenced me more than I know about. And there's a lot of these other factors that came in, you know, and the time of life, the 60s. You know, as they say, if you remember them, you weren't there, but I do remember the 60s quite clearly. I was still quite young, but lots of influences. But I just had this incredible passion for motor cars. And the first time that I realized I wanted to be a car designer was when I saw a Porsche 356 go past the house. How old are you then?

4:51three or four really oh yeah and we were then instantly doodling it was a brand new porsche 356 people think old classics but it was a brand new one went back i thought wow that's the world i want to be in i love the fact you made it from that moment that's you manifested it ultimately yeah yeah so from i used to doodle cars you know when i should have been listening in class at school was that you yeah that was me so terrible i went on to then try and own them or drive them and so on you went on to then try and so from that sort of early doodles to then manifesting what you did talk me through that period well i started drawing at a very young age i used to walk around the house drawing things in tv when we finally got a tv remember it's the 50s um and then i discovered cars and started drawing cars and then i suddenly dawned on me well somebody you must create these cars to begin with.

5:45So I just kept drawing cars. I tried to emulate cars that I could see and copy them, but that was too difficult. So I thought I'll just make my own cars up. And then I don't know at what point it came to me that this must be a job, but I did realise quite, I think my grandfather probably said somebody has to design cars. And so, you know, it all started with this determination. before I went to school. My first day at school, I'll never forget it. Primary school, as we call it. That's five years old. And I took a drawing to my teacher. I said, please miss, when I grow up, I'm going to be a car designer.

6:26It's still clear in my mind. And it stuck with me forever. You took that to the point where, you know, you can't make that happen without taking action. You wrote a letter to Jaguar. Were you 15? I was 14 at the time. yeah it was 69 68 and you see I was going through the 60s trying to find out how to be a car designer and there was no formal education and the closest thing I could find was something called industrial design product design or in those days they called it commercial art which covered everything from graphics to design things and I thought I need to get I wanted to go to Jaguar I'd fallen in love with Jaguar having seen the E-Type and then the XJ was was quite influential in my own mind about what it stood for which is another story but but um um i thought well i will write to jaguar and say i want to be a car designer what do i do and i got i wrote to william haynes who was the vice president of engineering number two to sir william lyons and he wrote back to me and then i said he said come in become an apprentice and then work your way through the business and you can get onto the drafting board.

7:39I said, no, you don't understand. I want to design a shape. I want to be a car designer. I want to design the whole car. So he wrote back again. And I think the implication was a bit close to the bone because that was Sir William Lines' job. He designed the cars. And he said, well, you must draw more accurately. I still have the letter that he sent me. And you must get into detail more and take up commercial art, which was about as close as I got to understanding what I should do next. I was 14. I had probably three or four years ahead of me to try and sort it all out. My father helped a lot. He said, you know, I've got to get you into this business somehow.

8:19He knew the passion. That's probably all you talked about. He could see the passion. I mean, where other kids were going off to play football, you know, and down in the park, I was at home drawing cars. If I wasn't on my push bike. and I loved the idea of moving this sense of movement I was always on my push bike going off in the days you go off in the morning come back for tea your mother didn't know where you were she was too bothered half the time but I was off cycling around the countryside if I wasn't drawing cars that was my life, push bike and cars no sports when you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work use Indeed Sponsor Jobs It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more.

9:06Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Low energy, unfocused, foggy. You might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide.

9:45Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist. Very similar to mine. Yeah. Yeah, genuinely. and always brought up around motorsport, watching it, going to track days. It's fabulous. And appreciating cars as they came out. And so I'm 48, born in 77. So cars that... I remember 77 well, actually. The cars that I... I was brought up on the E-Type and the sort of 308 that became the 288 GTO Ferrari. And these designs are what then fueled the passion for the car. Of course, there was noise.

10:25there was perhaps performance if there was racing but the look of a car is clearly so important it's what drives us to them ultimately yeah yeah it's emotional it's a story so how does the fear multiplier come to be where someone i'm being unfair right but you get where i'm going with it you know it was lauded as the best car ever made for all the practical reasons and god knows what engine was in it but it was so ugly and i know that that got highlighted on top gear and we can smile but there are some hideous looking cars how is it designed and let them off the drawing board i don't know i i despair with it you know because i had this philosophy that anything that's designed shouldn't be anything but either very practical or very beautiful that's it and boolean blake's is something very similar didn't he yeah and uh when i see a car that's not been designed very well or even ugly which some of them are a criminal waste of money you know because i i said to my team to remember when we're designing a car we are committing to millions of pounds worth of tooling in the shape of this thing millions can be the future of the business as well yeah no one buys the car yeah and so you know you have a huge responsibility and how designers do some of the stuff they did and not sense that responsibility of course a lot of designers saw themselves as artists i'm going to shock the world well that's all very well if you're putting a painting up somewhere and you want to like bacon or someone like that going wow i'm not sure about that but it's hard you can't do that with a motor car it's irresponsible it's got to be something people feel a warmth towards something they love i think i might be wrong but i think i'm agreeing got to bring up the db7 oh yeah master martin absolutely for me the prettiest car thank you ever made perhaps because that was my e-type at a time when you know that you talk about the the porsche going past three or four years old the DB7 for me just stopped me in my tracks.

12:22I still remember when I first saw one in the flesh. I was actually walking past the Ritz in London and just stopped. There was four or five of us and we just stopped and watched it go by. Wow. So, I mean, that taught me through the design of that. Well, that car, you know, I'd left Ford. I'd went to work for Tom Walkinshaw Racing. He wanted a design studio. Tom had an incredible imagination, but what he realised was that he needed a design studio. That was going to be a shop window. That was going to get his work, and if we can get beautiful cars designed, we'll get the rest into the business.

12:55And it worked. And so we got this project, Design a Jaguar. And Tom said, we'll do it on the XJS platform. Jaguar didn't want it. We hadn't really done the car at this point. We'd half done it. And Tom said, carry on with it, but it's going to be something different. I said, well, I can't carry on with it. I don't know what it's going to be. He said, well, it's going to be a NASMART. And I thought, wow, really? Anyway, it evolved. it became an Aston Martin as it evolved into the Aston Martin. And it became a DB7. And what's interesting was I didn't know it was going to be called DB7. Nobody did.

13:30You know, it found that name afterwards. And it was the same with the F-Type. We can talk about that later. But, you know, if the pressure had been too much, I thought it was going to be a DB7. Interesting. Because it was a lineage that I was responsible for. But we created this car, and I was very nervous. I was on my own. just me and one other designer who was my protégé and off we went in this car and I had fearful moments, sleepless nights I said, can I do this? Because I never designed it I didn't tell Tom until after he'd finished, I'd never designed a whole car on my own before, you know I'd always been with teams and you always get input and thoughts and so we created this vehicle and I remember doing the clay model of it with some great clay modelling expertise my friends that I brought from Ford were with me, four or five great modelling guys.

14:24And we took it down to Tom's farmhouse with a big driveway because we had nowhere to see it. You know, it was confidential. I remember it was a semi-matte silver in a film that we put on it called Dyno. And I stood back and I thought, hmm. I felt really pleased. I said, that's working. Right, that's it. We've done it. This is going to be good. And you mentioned the first time you saw it. Now, the thing with designing a car is you're so close to it that you don't really know what it looks like until it takes you by surprise, until it has the high ground. And I remember we'd built some prototypes running around the industrial estate we were in.

15:07And then one of the first ones I saw in a petrol station down the road from us, sitting there and getting filled with fuel. And I went past it and I thought, wow. I love that. And that just, and then it took me a few seconds to realise it was a DB7. What did that feel like? Oh, it was one of the biggest, and this was one of the biggest highs ever. It was a high. Probably one of the best design highs. I love hearing that. And it was just, I thought, yes. You know, it was one of those moments. Back to the kid. Back to the kid. Three, four years old. Can I do this? Am I good enough? Stopped in your tracks.

15:43It did. Because I didn't recognise it. I want to keep it on you, but I just want to ask you, because I'll lose my train of thought if I don't. Have you had that moment with another car, another manufacturer? Yes. I always look for that moment now, though. That's the thing. And I always say, you don't know a car until you see it in the road. And I know that moment's going to come. I got it with the F-Type when I saw it the first time in the A46. I got it a little bit with the XJ, which was different from anything else it got before. yeah but I go looking for the moment now what about a another mark that you've had nothing to do with whether it's whether you've seen it in the flesh or you've seen a design and it stopped you and you've gone you know you can you can really appreciate and respect what's being done there um if you go back to recent history probably the Audi TT always struck me as being a beautiful piece of design and when I saw one on the road I thought yeah that is that really lives up to his I'd agree with that.

16:42The images, you know. The latest Porsches I have that feeling for because Michael Maurer has done a wonderful job in those 991, 992. They're good-looking cars, aren't they? They're very good-looking cars. And they have a knowing about them. There's very few cars I can say that about these days. They have a knowing about, you know, the designer understood what he was doing and the form was right and the balance was right and the discipline was right. Somebody asked me recently, what's the one word that matters most in car design? I said editing. Like a writer, it's what you don't put on it matters as much as what you do put into the design.

17:21Editing is very important. You look at a 911, I like to think the F-Type's up there as well, but the 911 is a super-looking car. So that in any way, putting them all in a box. Back to the 356, you know? Yes, exactly. There you go, it's full circle. And that analogy of all of these cars fit in a scenario where they're all clean lines. There's no big spoilers. There's no big inlets. That's something that feels like it's creeping into modern car design. The new Ferraris in particular have got like winglets and scoops and everything. And I feel like that design that's clean and subtle seems to be being replaced with really quite sort of dramatic.

17:59It's more difficult. You know, people think, oh, it's a simple design. Well, it's simple because it's discipline. You know, there's a saying I love, I can't remember the guy, he said, it's very difficult to be this simple. It's true, because you have to discipline yourself not to over-egg anything. It's like music, it's like writing, it's the same. And, you know, it really is about discipline. I used to go into the view room with my team and I'd say, right, take that line off, take that line off. let's get the pure surface in there and some designers get a little upset with me because they'd worked on it for a while we'll keep it for another car, don't worry about it and so it was a discipline of getting the big shape matters, how it sits in the wheels how it relates to the rest of its space and then the discipline of the surfaces make them beautiful not complicated and I see so much stuff in the road now it's like oh Well, let's go there with it.

19:03We've got a big shift as well in technology, right? The combustion engine being replaced by electric and then talk of hydrogen coming. But what that's meant is that there's not a need for cooling ducts and certain things that were designed in. And so where do you see design going now? Because correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like the car now can be designed more about aerodynamic shape and look than ever before. And yet some of the cars coming out now, quite simply, I can't stand them. they're so ugly. There's some funny things out there. Aerodynamics is receptive. You know, most aerodynamic cars are the most square ones in plan view.

19:41I didn't know that. E-type's terrible. Because what you have to do is split the air over the top and down the sides and not let it cause turbulence on the movement. So unfortunately, aerodynamics does cause some strange corners on cars. Cut-off backs. But you can still manage it. you can still manage it well. The other thing is packaging. If you don't have a great big engine in the front, you can then start to use the front end a little bit more efficiently, the rest of the body more efficiently, as I did in the I-PACE, which I'm still quite proud of, actually, because electric cars don't have to look different for the sake of it.

20:18They can look different because you can do it. And it surprises me how many electric cars that have come out have not honored the opportunity to do that. A few have, but so many of them haven't. Still got long bonnets and I'm like they've got a V12 in there. I'm not thinking of any particular, but, you know, and I don't understand why would you do that? You know, if you want to be an honest designer, you would give the space of a car, this is a sports car, this is indulgent. You give the space of the car to the occupants. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

20:55It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Low energy, unfocused, foggy. You might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors.

21:34Great tasting hydration no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist. The lazy option. The designer has ultimately not lived up to the brief where you've got a bit more of a blank canvas. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, we live in interesting times in the car world. Yeah. So take me back to in terms of I-Pace and Jaguar. There's a pride there. There must be a part of your heart that's got Jaguar in it. And we've just had this recent marketing campaign that's backfired on them massively.

22:18How do you feel about all this? Because there's the design element. There's also the destruction of the company, if you like, in broad view. destruction my goodness strong isn't it um I don't think you know when I left I missed it and then a couple years passed I got into my own business as you know and and I decided just to let it all go because you can't be um you can't be too emotional about it and when I saw this I was surprised I could see what they were trying to do what frustrated me if I can say is that they were they were behaving as if the company was broken from a design point of view so they needed to reinvent themselves yeah but i don't think it was broken at all it was fine the cars were meeting the objectives of what was planned for the car company and the ipace and f pace in particular was a very high seller you still see them everywhere but they decided to go and you know unilaterally just turn the whole thing on its head do you think they were trying to get ahead of the curve and do something dramatic that might have elevated them and then it backfired well if it backfired it backfired but i i wouldn't want to make comment on that but i uh i didn't see the relevance of it personally because i was right in the middle of it um i didn't think the company was broken jagger's issues were cost jagger couldn't make a lot of money because the cars cost too much to make and small volume and they've gone into the decision to go and compete with bmw and mercedes directly and we couldn't get the volume to meet it so therefore jagger's biggest failing if i can say was the fact they cost too much to build we didn't have the margins to play with to start slashing prices and and such like and so you know rather than try and take some cost out the car which they possibly could have done with some real clever thinking they decided to just stop building them and go into a different genre of cars, which I can totally understand.

24:18Go up market a bit, maybe. Interesting time, isn't it? It's interesting. I'm fearful for them. I have no idea what's going to happen. No, I knew you wouldn't. I think it was more a conscious part of the conversation where I've loved the brand forever. It's a brand that a lot of people adore and aspire to own. And it's like, I just hope they see through this period where they'd be a brave marketing decision. I don't know what's happening there. There might be plans to go and do other more emotive things and perhaps get it back into balance. But that was always Jaguar's problem, though, it just cost too much money.

24:54Two reasons. There wasn't an economy of scale, and the mechanics of a Jaguar are actually more complicated than most of the competitors. Suspension is more sophisticated. It all costs money. You couldn't get the cost down because the engineering guys wanted to build the best car in its class. Well, that costs money rather than just do what was adequate. Jag engineers wouldn't do that. So what they should have rightly done is just lift the price up and make it more specialised. It's kind of where they're going, maybe too much, but we'll see. We will see. We will see. Ian Callum Design, talk to you about the journey that's led to you setting up your own business.

25:34Well, it's not Ian Callum Design. It's just called Callum. It is a design business and an engineering business. So we take the whole view of we're designing a product, hopefully mainly cars. We've done other things. And when I left work, along with my friends, Adam Delfrancesco and David Fairbairn, we decided to create our own design engineering company. And I left. I retired on a Friday and I started work on the Monday. Out of madness. Was that planned? sort of planned yeah i should have taken two weeks off but i didn't did you have a fear of retirement where i'm going is do you use someone that thrives on having a purpose in doing yes absolutely i mean i i the the biggest high for me is being involved not necessarily creating it myself but being involved in in the birth of a new product i i find i get such a high on it it's addictive and i can't let it go it might be a car it might be pieces of furniture in our case it might even be a whiskey bottle which we've done we've been a fairly eclectic mix of things and but yeah i i thrive on it and um that's that i see is my life you know there is you know there's a little beyond that can you share what you're working on now in any way is there any confidential element there's a lot of confidentiality in what we're doing.

27:01But we are doing, we're doing a revisit of the Vanquish that I designed the original one. And we call it VC25 because we won't build any more than 25. It's 25 years since the Vanquish was created. Yeah, I think it's all right. Yeah, I have one and I look at it and I think, yeah, it's not bad really. That car was designed with only one design review, one piece of input and the rest was left entirely up to me. That never happened since. Is that why it's so beautiful? Well, it might be something to do with it. Other people didn't have any impact. We had a review with some owners the other day and they said, well, why?

27:41How come it looks so strong? I said, well, it was just one piece of mind that I had to get onto the thing. So, yeah. But, yeah, Callum Designer Callum. Yeah, I thoroughly enjoy it. My only regret is I should have done it five years earlier, you know, because I'm not young anymore and the energies are not quite where they should be. But, you know, you're always looking for the next thing. Always want to create the next car. I mean, I still have a car left in me. I won't know until I get there. Oh, just desperately. You've reminded me, Enzo Ferrari, when he was asked what his favourite car was. Probably the next one.

28:25Yep, that's my natural answer. And, you know, everything that's gone past, it's done. Be pleased. Put it behind you. That's how I see it. I think we were talking off camera just before we started talking now about the whole always facing forwards. And just you sitting here now reflecting the perspective and so much maturity and experience from what you've done. Someone looking at you now, listening to you as an aspirational designer, what advice would you give them? Tenacity. you know just but have a point of view that's the first thing you know and it might not be the same of mine it might change points of view can change in life mine has changed many times of what i think is right have a strong point of view and believe in it and run with it until you change your mind or someone else persuades you you might have been wrong it's fine and be tenacious but do in a nice way you know the people i didn't like i used to work with occasionally were people who was so ambitious aggressively.

29:26And what I found was there was two, this is very important for somebody to get in the business, there's two forms of ambition. There are those who want to get up the greasy pole and become important and have a top job and for whatever reason, materialistically, politically, ego. I mean, we all know those people. And the other one is ambition to be a good designer. and eventually you might become one. Have that ambition to be a good designer. It's so important. It's the why behind everything, right? Yeah, and forget about everything else. Forget about the greasy pole. Forget about the status. If you're a lower grade designer and you get a chance to design a steering wheel, which at the end of the day you're happy with, and you go home with that satisfaction, it's worth a million pounds.

30:14It's invaluable to share that. And actually a lot of people talk about manifesting. And to some people manifesting is kind of, you know if I kind of mmm it'll come tenacity you've got to put the effort in and then visualize which is which without you even talking about it in that way that's what you were doing you were drawing you were outlying what you wanted to do then you and then that led to writing letters into taking the action to build the life that you wanted that you've lived yeah it's really invaluable it is and and and yeah tenacity is everything don't be put off by comments my school teachers didn't want me to be a car designer they want me to be a doctor my best subject was biology and so I dropped biology as a subject at school just to annoy them there's a defiance element to you I'm a total rebel but isn't that part of the creativity side of things because there's there's plenty of kids that go to school that don't fit a box and get try to be shaped and a lot of those kids you're one of them go on to be very successful I said that was very good, which really frustrated my teachers because you go off and be a scientist or whatever.

31:18I said, I want to be a card. Get this into your head. This is what I'm going to do. And it was like, no, ridiculous.