Interview with Eugen Enns, Automotive Designer

How Did You First Become Interested in Design?

Interestingly enough, I was not originally interested in design. My high school art classes actually drove me towards sketching and developing shapes. I laugh now, but it also framed my opinion that designers were the “black sheep” of the art world. But “form follows function” was a no-go for my ideological mindset that “art exists because of itself” and my collegiate study of industrial design was the moment when I finally crossed over to the design side. It was the idea of semiotic connection (not only in words but also in sculptures and form) combined with function that made it interesting for me. For example, I like having the ability to create a new hierarchy of functions or a new environment for functions that impact how people interact with or react to something.

What Sort of Design Work Did You Start out Doing? Was It a Lot of Different Types of Design or Were You More Focused?

Product design, specifically some products for a hospital and some cameras, was the first design work that I did intentionally.

What sort of design education did you receive? If you were self-taught, how did you go about doing it? If you went to design school, what are some of the important things you learned there that you still use today?

I studied transportation design at Pforzheim University where art, anthropology, semiotic art, and aesthetics were my favorite subjects. I appreciated the environment at Pforzheim as it allowed me to be surrounded by creative people with different directions (fashion, product, exhibition, game and many other kind of design fields) as provided a solid overview and an inspiring environment to take my first steps in the design world. After a design student’s third term, Pforzheim requires a transportation design internship which is where I was introduced to car design. It was during my first internship with Volkswagen that I learned what car design meant and developed a passion for cars.

How Did You First Become Involved in Concept Car Design?

The same way most designers get their start: I participated in internal design-competitions.

As a Designer, When You Were First Starting Out, How Did You Try to Build a Name for Yourself? Did You Market Your Own Work?

To be honest, despite today’s trend of having a blog or online portfolio, I have never felt a need to do that. Perhaps I should have dedicated more to it, but many of my sketches for the Iosis Max have been released by Ford and shared publically so they have still ended up online. That said, I do post some art-sketches on Facebook occasionally.

You Recently Designed the Face for Ford Evos, Tell Me About That Process. How Long Did It Take? How Do You Start? Where Do You Look for Inspiration? Was It Difficult?

Designing the face of a brand doesn’t happen overnight. Typically good ideas just come straight to you at unexpected times, and it is your job to take the next step to develop them further. In a sense, you have to help them “grow up”. Developing a face for a car that represents the future of a brand with a strong history like Ford requires significant research of past trends as well as awareness of the brand vision because all of those elements need to be captured in the design – the face of a car is one of the main attributes that consumers will associate the brand with.