Alumni Profiles
Until recently, the main focus of Art Center College of Design’s Transportation Design Department has been on the automobile industry. Though this is now evolving, the fact that many alumni have successfully moved into motorcycle, aircraft and watercraft design and beyond proves that the core training students receive at Art Center can be used to tackle any design challenge. Here are a few Transportation Department alumni who have made their mark beyond the automobile.
 Miguel Galluzzi (TRANS ’86) |
 Dale Frye (TRANS ’86) |
 David Robb (TRANS ’79) |
 Glade Johnson (TRANS ’69) |
 Greg Brew (TRANS ’91) |
Miguel Galluzzi (TRANS ’86)
Vice President of Design,
Piaggio Group
“The most exciting part about design is making that first sketch,” says Miguel Galluzzi, vice president of design for the Piaggio Group, the Italian manufacturer of scooters and motorcycles, whose brands include Piaggio, Vespa, Gilera, Derbi, Aprilia and Moto Guzzi. “That’s the magic moment where everything happens.”
In the world of motorcycle design, you don’t get any bigger than Galluzzi. His game-changing creation, the stripped-down 1992 Ducati Monster, kick-started the entire “naked” bike category and stands as one of the most imitated of all motorcycles. “All you need is a saddle, tank, engine, two wheels and handlebars,” says Galluzzi of his minimalist creation on Ducati’s online virtual museum.
For the Buenos Aires-born Italian designer, bikes have always been a part of his life. His family raced both motorcycles and cars, so he’s been involved virtually “since [he] was born.” But a love for bikes didn’t necessarily point to a career in design. “I didn’t know anything about design,” says Galluzzi. “Or that there was a school where I could pursue this passion.” He clearly remembers when, as an engineering student still learning English in Miami in 1980, he chanced upon a “30 Years of Art Center Transportation Design” advertisement in a car magazine. Based on that ad, he visited the College and realized, “That’s the place I want to be.”
As an Art Center student, he also clearly remembers lessons that faculty like Ted Youngkin, Joe Farrar and Harry Bradley taught him—a few of which he didn’t appreciate at the time. “Some of the things they were teaching made me really frustrated,” he laughs. “But after all these years, those lessons still keep coming back to me. I’ll think, ‘Wow, those guys were really sharp,’ and it gives me that boost of extra energy I need to push ahead.” The benefit of Art Center, Galluzzi contends, is not that it teaches students about transportation design or any specific field. Rather, he says, Art Center teaches students “an attitude towards design.”
And that attitude took him far. After graduating, Galluzzi worked at Opel in Russelscheim, Germany for two years, where he designed for the company’s V-Car/Omega studio. From there, he went to Honda R&D in Offenbach, Germany, and eventually opened a Honda design studio in Milan, Italy. Galluzzi next accepted the position of chief motorcycle designer at the Cagiva Group in Varese, Italy, where he designed bikes for the Group’s three brands: Cagiva, Ducati and Husqvarna. He stayed with Cagiva for the next 17 years, where the aforementioned 1992 Ducati Monster, the 1996 Cagiva Planet and the 1999 Cagiva Raptor/V-Raptor were among his many accomplishments.
Now, at the Piaggio Group, Galluzzi is thinking about the future of transportation. “I’m not thinking only about motorcycles,” he says. “This global financial situation is opening many windows and giving designers a chance to reinvent the way we move around cities. That’s where Piaggio has an advantage over other manufacturers. We’re talking about two-and three- wheeled transportation that’s urban, mobile and intelligent. In the future, we’re going to be moving a lot more people. So we need something more practical, more ecological and more economical.”
Dale Frye (TRANS ’86)
Former Design Manager,
Tiara Yachts
“The process of design is what I find most intriguing,” says Dale Frye, a former design manager for Tiara Yachts, whose multifaceted design career has spanned numerous industries, including automotive (Prince Automotive, now JCI), consumer electronics (Nokia), and, more recently, furniture. “I love the challenge of solving problems and being that outsider with a fresh set of eyes. That’s what attracts me.”
“When it comes to developing products, the marine industry is relatively unsophisticated,” says Frye, who explains that most boat companies were started by traditional “old school” craftsmen who decided to turn their skills into a business. When the management of luxury motor yacht manufacturer Tiara Yachts decided they wanted to renovate the company’s product development process, they hired Frye to shift their processes into a lean manufacturing system. “That sounded like an interesting problem to solve. The challenge was not ‘just give me a pretty boat.’”
Frye is especially proud of what his team accomplished with the Sovran, Tiara’s then-struggling line of Express Cruisers. For the Sovran 4000, his team built a yacht entirely around Volvo Penta’s then brand-new Inboard Performance System (IPS). Building around the new drive and propulsion system not only gave the yacht improved maneuverability, but it allowed the designers to give the Sovran a look that Frye describes as “stately, elegant and strong.” It was a risky move, but one that paid off: when Tiara introduced the 4000 at the 2005 Miami International Boat Show, it broke all of the company’s sales records by a two-to-one margin.
Frye credits his education at Art Center—and faculty like Ted Youngkin, Strother McMinn and Harry Bradley—with teaching him the importance of always asking questions. “They taught me to always think and to ask, ‘What am I trying to say?’ and ‘What am I truly trying to solve?’ and ‘Who’s going to end up using this?’”
What question is Frye asking himself these days? Well, for one, how to turn powerboating into a more eco-friendly activity. “The industry is going to have to get very serious very soon about its environmental impact,” says Frye, and adds that powerboats use an inordinate amount of fuel. And without getting into specifics, he hints that he’s working on finding a solution. “Right now I’m working on a boat that does things very differently.”
David Robb (TRANS ’79)
Vice President,
BMW Motorcycle Design
Talk with David Robb, vice president of motorcycle design for BMW, and you’ll hear quite a bit about acting, film score composition and, oh yes, motorcycles. For example, when Robb discusses BMW’s strategy for branching into new segments—the company currently has 16 different models for eight different segments—he compares the process to how an actor brings his own personality to a new role. “A good actor brings his life experiences with him,” says Robb. “You know it’s Bruce Willis up there on the screen, but he’s also doing something different. So when BMW enters a new segment, we’re still bringing our way of thinking, our art of engineering and our love for detail. Even if we’re doing an entry-level, one-cylinder motorcycle, you’re going to know it’s a BMW.”
Robb graduated from Art Center College of Design in 1979. After college, he enjoyed a brief stint at Chrysler Advanced Design before joining Audi Design in Ingolstadt, Germany, in 1980, where he was responsible for concept and production work in both interior and exterior studios. In 1984, he joined BMW, where he worked in automobile exterior design until 1993, when he was appointed director of motorcycle design. He recalls when Chris Bangle, BMW’s then chief of design, approached him with the idea of bringing BMW’s car and motorcycle design together under one roof. “When Chris first asked me if I’d be interested in motorcycles, I said, ‘Well, yes, as long as it’s not a dead end,’” says Robb. “A ‘dead end’ meant not getting back into cars. Now, if my boss were to say that he wants me to go back to cars, I’d say, ‘What, those things?’”
When Robb first took over motorcycle design, BMW was selling about 30,000 motorcycles a year worldwide. In the past two years, the company has sold over 102,000 worldwide. Robb attributes a great deal of this success to a better understanding of what customers actually want from a motorcycle. “In the ‘70s and ‘80s, BMW motorcycles were dependable, sturdy and rational,” explains Robb. “But when you think of motorcycling, ‘rational’ isn’t the first word to come to mind. You think sex appeal, intimacy with the vehicle and experiencing something with your whole body. We realized that we had good machines for thinking people, but that they weren’t satisfying our customer’s more visceral needs.”
It was a challenge that Art Center had helped prepare him for years earlier. One of the main lessons Robb took away from his classes was that the key to successfully communicating an idea was to imbue a product with feeling, expression and personality. “We’ve done a lot with technology and we’ve done a lot with understanding customers, but we’ve also come up with the appropriate designs as well,” says Robb of BMW’s success over the last eight years, and it’s ascent to becoming the number one-selling motorcycle manufacturer in Germany. “The challenge is like composing music for a film, where you have the script, and you know what story you’re trying to tell, but you just need to find the right composition. Should the music be simple? Layered? Sophisticated? Those are the things you learn back in school.”
Glade Johnson (TRANS ’69)
President,
Glade Johnson Design, Inc.
Glade Johnson was born and raised in Boise, Idaho—not exactly the type of locale you would expect somebody who designs yachts to hail from. “I grew up nowhere near the water,” laughs Johnson, president of Glade Johnson Design, Inc., his design firm that focuses almost exclusively on yacht interiors and exteriors. “The truth is that I wasn’t always interested in watercraft. Growing up, I was a total car nut. It was my passion and it all started with a love for hot rods. I would sketch them in homeroom. When I found out about Art Center, I was thrilled that there was a college teaching auto design.”
Johnson says the diversity of classes offered at Art Center, where he also minored in Product Design (“The way I see it, everything is a product.”), was tremendously beneficial for his career. As was being able to study with automotive design icons like Strother McMinn, who taught him the importance of not getting locked into a single design concept, and to always be prepared for harsh criticism.
After graduating from Art Center in 1969, Johnson moved to Detroit and worked for Ford for three years, followed by Chrysler for one year, drawing concept cars for both manufacturers. Although working in the automotive industry was a childhood dream fulfilled, Johnson yearned for more design freedom. In 1973, he took a job at the Seattle-based consultancy Walter Dorwin Teague (today known as Teague), where he focused on aircraft interiors for aerospace manufacturer Boeing for the next six years.
Following his work at Teague, Johnson became a vice president at Volpar, the Van Nuys, CA-based firm that also designed aircraft interiors for Boeing and private individuals. When that company dissolved, he decided to pursue his burgeoning interest in yachts and launched his own company in 1987. Since Johnson had amassed an impressive list of clients—including the kings of Saudi Arabia and Thailand and the president of North Yemen—he was able to transition smoothly into yacht design, securing a commission the very first day his company opened for business.
Twenty-two years later, Glade Johnson Design, Inc. is still going strong. Its list of completed projects include an interior and exterior rebuild of the “Ranger”, a 135-foot 1930’s America Cup-winning sailing yacht, and contemporary interior and exterior new builds for the 141-foot “Andiamo” and the 195-foot “Oasis” motoryachts. Currently, Johnson is working on an interior and exterior new build of a 200-foot motor yacht, whose contemporary interior he describes as “minimalist and super clean” and a 300 foot rebuild and restyling motor yacht project.
Johnson says that automotive design and yacht design are similar in that they both focus on working within constrained spaces. “It’s not like a house,” explains Johnson. “A lot of interior designers have tried to give yacht design a shot, but it’s tough for them. The spaces are unusual—nothing is square—and there’s a magnitude of technical interfaces that need to be accommodated. It’s quite a challenge to create an interesting, symmetrical, and seemingly simple space, while hiding all the circuit boards.”
Johnson adds that he’s especially fortunate to have evolved into yacht design. “Where else can you get the best craftsmen in the world to build something you’ve drawn?” he asks. He compares the process to the commission of Michelangelo and other Renaissance artists for a project. “All the artisans would be pulled together to create a magnificent work of art. It’s a very unique process.”
Greg Brew (TRANS ’91)
Director of Industrial Design,
Polaris Industries
“I’ve
been a car freak ever since I was a kid,” says Greg Brew. “But I’m also
a motorcycle fanatic. Really, I like anything with motors. I’m just not
interested in slow stuff.” As Director of Industrial Design for
Minnesota-based Polaris Industries, Brew oversees all of the company’s
lines of decidedly non-“slow stuff,” including its all-terrain
vehicles, snowmobiles, Victory motorcycle line and Ranger utility
vehicles.
Prior to his role at Polaris, Brew held positions with BMW/DesignworksUSA, BMW AG., Lancia SpA. and Fiat Auto SpA. Brew says one of the biggest differences between designing cars and designing at Polaris is that most of his Polaris customers are purchasing their vehicles purely for fun. Therefore, his designers need to intimately understand how the vehicles handle. In other words, they have to ride. “Everybody in the company, from the president to the accounting department, rides,” says Brew. “It would be very hard to work here if you didn’t.”
According to Brew, the ability to defend specific design choices has been an important skill for him throughout his career, and one that he developed while studying Transportation Design at Art Center. “I learned a lot about craftsmanship and the importance of a job well done at Art Center. But I also learned to become comfortable with people questioning what I was doing.” He adds, “Being able to clearly state your objectives, defend your work and give reasons for why you made certain choices is a big deal.”
As
an example, he points to the limited edition 10th Anniversary Victory
Vision Tour bike, which was named the “Best Touring Motorcycle in the
Country” by the Robb Report for its 2009 “Best of the Best” issue. Brew
explains that it was his job to ensure the swooping curves and modern
look the designers created for the Vision ended up becoming a reality,
even if it meant receiving pushback from other departments. “The Vision
was a result of me doggedly pursuing the path that took us back to our
original intent,” he says.
What does the future hold for Polaris? Car Classic ’09 attendees can get a sneak peek: the company’s stripped-down Victory Core Concept, an award-winning bike whose frame components were made using an innovative sand-casting process, will be on display. “Take a look at the Core,” suggests Brew. “It’s a preview of the type of thought and language we’re going to put into our upcoming models.”