Best of 2020: Frank Stephenson | The Man Who Designs the Most Expensive Cars in The World
The Unmistakable Creative Podcast
Srinivas Rao
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 December 2020
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode we get to meet Frank Stephenson, designer of the worlds most elite exotic cars. Having been the head of design for Ferrari, Maserati and McLaren, Frank has been responsible for the design of some of the most successful products in automotive history. Here, we listen to his story, dive into the design process and of course, find out what it’s like to have the dream job of designing supercars.
Take a look at Frank’s website to find out more about everything he’s up to at www.Frank Stephenson.com
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Transcript
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| 0:14.8 | When I was working at McLaren, starting with that clean sheet, it was important to establish a design language that had never been done before because at that level you don't want to copy other, you know, mix and match different design solutions from different companies and turn it into that what I call a ministerly soup it really doesn't taste like |
| 0:18.2 | anything but if you can take the concept of nature of why things are fast or develop be fast in nature, |
| 0:28.3 | what makes those designs fast and you can apply that to a car design, then you must be doing something right. |
| 0:35.0 | And I did that at McLaren by studying fast animals, fast birds, fast fish. |
| 0:41.2 | They're all, I would call it shrink-wrapped. |
| 0:43.6 | In other words, there's no excessive material on these fast organisms. |
| 0:48.4 | They're all basically honed to almost like an athletic looking body where there is very little |
| 0:53.9 | BMI you can almost say body mass index or or mass tone so they're they're almost |
| 0:59.5 | like hungry looking in the sense that there's no superfluous surfaces. |
| 1:04.4 | In other words, it's not rounded, it's sucked in. |
| 1:06.7 | It's almost like what I call shrink wrapping. |
| 1:09.3 | And that has given the McLarens that I've worked on for the last 10 years that distinctive honed |
| 1:16.1 | uh... very athletic very light very fast look to him |
| 1:20.2 | and very unique. I'm Sreni Rao and this is the unmistakable creative |
| 1:28.0 | podcast where you get a window into the stories and insights of the most |
| 1:31.0 | innovative and creative minds who started movements, built thriving business, and episode archive at unmistakable Creative.com. Attention to all passengers. You can now book your train tickets on Uber and get 10% back in Uber credits to spend on your next train journey. |
| 2:00.0 | So no excuses not to visit your in-laws this Christmas. |
| 2:04.0 | Trains, now on Uber. |
| 2:07.0 | Tees and sees apply. |
| 2:08.0 | Check the Uber app. |
| 2:09.0 | Great. |
| 2:12.0 | Welcome to the unmistakable Creative. |
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