“Korean would be my eighth one,” responded Luc Donckerwolke sheepishly when asked how many languages he speaks.
Hyundai’s soft-spoken senior vice president of design is not only a master of his craft but a polyglot to boot. It’s a shame he’s so damn affable, otherwise, he’d be easy to loathe for his superhuman smarts. In comparison, the only language I’m fluent in is profanity and even that’s a stretch.
Briefly recapping his life’s journey during a roundtable discussion, Donckerwolke didn’t learn these languages just for kicks. A Belgian citizen, he was born in Peru and bounced around South America and Africa during his formative years.
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Professionally, he studied engineering in his native country, learned design in Switzerland, then worked at practically every division of the Volkswagen Group, from Audi and Skoda, to Seat and Lamborghini. He even did a stint at Peugeot in Paris. For better or worse, his adult life has mirrored his youth, though now that he’s shepherding Hyundai’s design department, this itinerant lifestyle may change. “Actually, I hope that I am not going to move that much anymore,” he said with a laugh, and can you blame him?
Gangnam Style
As vice president of design, which direction is Donckerwolke steering Hyundai and its Genesis luxury division? To keep things interesting, he’s got a map, compass, and willingness to sail through uncharted waters.
This brand’s unique East-Asian heritage will play an important role in the visual direction it takes. “Designing a car in Korea for Korean customers is actually quite interesting,” said Donckerwolke, because of some unexpected cultural dynamics.
In places like America and Europe, buyers seem to value continuity, they want products to have familiar DNA, to build upon the groundwork laid by predecessors. “[But] here in Korea, in terms of industrial products, there is a strong will to differentiate between model lineups and between generation,” said Donckerwolke. “This is a bit different than everywhere else in the world. [In Korea] people want to be surprised, people want to have things that are changing constantly.”
This willingness to break with tradition will be reflected in upcoming Hyundai designs, but only to an extent. As a mass-market, global brand, it still needs to remain relatively conventional. However, with its upmarket division, it has an opportunity to really take some chances.
“A luxury brand has to have a geographical identity,” said Donckerwolke. “When you do a volume brand, it is not as strong.” Genesis is positioned as being uniquely Korean, differentiated in the ways mentioned above.
One thing Donckerwolke stressed several times during our interview was that Hyundai design will be . Rather than making different sizes of the same vehicle, future styling will have similar visual touchstones but they will not be copies of one another. He said it best himself, “Each model will have its own identity. It’s a bit different than what has been done before.”
Creating this unique look for each vehicle is “more fascinating than having to adapt the design to a to another model that is boring. That’s something I don’t want to do,” said Donckerwolke. “I still have some years to create another one again; I don’t want to get bored.”
The Perils of Modernity
According to Donckerwolke, current trends are making it tough to get excited about not just design but many things. He said the hardest part of his job is dealing with globalization.
“Everybody communicates with everybody. We breathe the same air, we eat the same food, we read the same books and magazines, we listen to the same music, and that is making things annoying, boring.” Continuing, Donckerwolke said, “There’s hardly any difference anymore in between the different continents and that makes things less interesting.” When you don’t get an instant culture shock, he said, “You travel for nothing.”
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Variety, as the old adage goes, is the spice of life, which applies perfectly to Donckerwolke’s field. “This is why I believe that you can only be a good designer if you constantly change the discipline in which you work, otherwise you repeat things, you don’t evolve, you don’t learn,” he said. “A designer should be able to design anything from a lawnmower, to a car, to a plane.”
Visual diversity will be Hyundai’s fundamental design differentiator going forward. Styling that’s unique to each model should help this South Korean automaker, and especially its upmarket Genesis brand, stand out in a saturated global market. Will this strategy work? Its efficacy remains to be seen, but if anyone has an idea of what customers want around the world it’s a man that speaks more languages than there are days in a week. Hyundai is in safe hands.
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