When I Grow Up, I Want to be a Designer

A rendered image of the Chevy Traverse by Vincent Cheng

DETROIT (June 2009) — When did you fall in love with cars? Perhaps it was the time your parents took you to the local auto show. Or maybe it was the year you opened your birthday gift and found your first set of HotWheels. Or the first time you pressed down on the pedal of a go-kart and felt its little engine rumble beneath you. Maybe, like some kids, your first word was “car.”

Have you ever thought about channeling your passion for cars into a lifelong career?

Vincent Cheng, a Canadian 10th grader aspiring to be a designer, spotted the GM Global Design Internship videos on a YouTube channel and reached out to its owner—who just so happened to work with GM. Inspired by Vincent’s charisma and ambition, GM gave him the opportunity to talk to two Human Resource Coordinators. During his call, he got to ask all of his burning questions about working in the automotive industry.

1. What types of design careers does GM have?

Answer: Here are some of the design careers that we offer:

* Creative Transportation Designers develop original and innovative vehicle interior and exterior design proposals using 2D and 3D skills.
* Color & Trim Designers develop color and trim proposals for the outside and inside of our vehicles.
* Industrial Designers develop proposals for all aspects of the vehicle design process.
* Textile Designers develop exterior and interior color and trim proposals for vehicle programs.
* Graphic Designers develop innovative and fresh graphic designs for emblems, packaging and presentations.
* Product Designers contribute to all aspects of vehicle design including exterior and interior design components.
* Clay Sculptors develop 3D clay models for vehicle design proposals.
* Digital Sculptors do similar work, but they use digital tools to create 3D models on the computer.
* Design Appearance Quality Designers ensure exterior and interior design proposals meet quality appearance standards.
* Human Machine Interface Designers develop design proposals ensuring appropriate human/machine interfaces.
* Animators develop 3D animations of vehicle designs for presentations.

2. What are some of the types of things I can do in my area to prepare myself for the design field? I’ve already enrolled in a program for a spring break camp.

Answer: At the end of the day, no matter what design field you go into, whether it be architecture, transportation design or product design, your communication skills visually, verbally and graphically have to be top notch so that you will be able to represent your ideas. There are a lot of different things you can do in your local area. For example, take a drawing course at a local community college.

There’s stuff you can do on your own, too. You can go to local museums that have old car exhibits and sketch. Try and capture the essence of the vehicle. Vehicle design is all about the beauty, grace and proportion.

Even just keeping up to date on car design news—what are the new trends?

If you want to venture out of your local area, schools all across the country offer summer camps. Here in Detroit, the College for Creative Studies (CCS) offers a summer camp. They even have housing space, so people from all over could potentially enroll. In the end, you have to do a little bit of exploration to see what’s going to work for you.

3. Does GM have any opportunities where high school kids can get the chance to experience the working environment? Or get the chance to express what they feel about the future to people already in the field?

Answer: Right now we are doing a couple of programs that interface at the high school level. In our local area, Detroit, we have a program one night a week where we bring in high school students into our studio environment. We’re very interested in what different people think about the future, especially people of all ages.

4. Are there any schools in particular that you usually take college students from?

Answer: Here are a couple of schools we generally recruit from:

* Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, California)
* Academy of Art University (San Francisco, California)
* The College for Creative Studies (Detroit, Michigan)
* The Cleveland Institute of Art (Cleveland, Ohio)
* Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah)
* University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, Ohio)
* Pratt Institute of Art (New York and Brooklyn, New York)

The list goes on. We even recruit students from schools all around the world. We generally look at the schools I listed because we’re interested in their curriculum and have been impressed with the student designers that have graduated from them.

5. What kind of degrees do most recent college graduates in the design field have?

Answer: Most people we hire have a bachelor’s degree in industrial design, transportation design or fine arts—degrees that typically let us see their creativity and innovative thought process. However we are open to different fields. In fact, we seek out people with different backgrounds because it complements future vehicle design.

6. When you go to hire somebody, what are some of the main things that you’re looking for? Has everybody had experience designing cars?

Answer: What we’re looking for is the ability to come up with new and innovative ideas and be able to visually communicate these ideas with 2D and 3D skills.

We take a wide breadth of people from different backgrounds. We hire recent graduates, but we also hire people that have been in the industry for a long time. We look for people both inside and outside of the U.S. There are so many different aspects of design that there is no one size fits all answer to this. There are people designing the exterior of the car, the color and trim of the car, the graphics for the car and so on.

In the end though, we are looking for the same basic ingredients in each person: creativity in coming up with new and innovative ideas and the ability to express them. Trends will change, but the people creating the cars don’t necessarily change.

7. What are some of the questions that you ask during an interview?

Answer: We always ask questions about people’s leadership abilities and the different experiences they’ve had through their collegiate experiences. We want to know what kind of leader they are, how they work in a team environment and how they integrate information.

We ask that people bring in a portfolio when they come for an interview. A portfolio is a collection of artwork samples that an artist puts together. It can include drawings and photographs that showcase the artist’s different areas of experience. Looking at a potential employee’s portfolio is very important to us. The portfolio allows us to see how a person expresses their ideas.

8. What are some of the computer programs that a designer uses?

Answer: Designers use programs that allow freehand sketching and the ability to design in both 2D and 3D—programs like Photoshop and AliasStudio. At GM, we also use some very high-tech animation software. But again, your fundamental sketching is still the most important aspect. We can teach you the tools, but we can’t teach you the line, length, quality or proportion that you’re trying to express.

9. Is there any other advice that you would give to someone who wants to pursue a career in this field?

Answer: Continue working on expressing and communicating your own ideas. Choose opportunities during high school and college that allow you to work on your drawing and communication skills. If you can, look for an opportunity where you can really be involved in creating a product from drawing board to finished product—it doesn’t have to be a vehicle. Find a mentor working in the field, participate in an internship and polish up your written and verbal communication skills at every opportunity.

To see some more of Vincent's work, check out his very own blog and YouTube channel.