The sentimental futurist

Text Sven WEDEMEYER

The term designer is too narrow to do justice to Daniel Simon. As a visionary multi-talent, he not only inspires the shapes of exclusive boutique sports cars, but also Hollywood’s wildest cinematic fantasies. The German moves like a somnambulist between the realms of realism and fiction. He narrates, invents, doubts and dreams. With this free spirit, we talk about the obvious – such as formal language. About the unavoidable—like artificial intelligence. And the surprising—such as time, distinction and longevity.

Daniel Simon is primarily attracted by contrasts. He tracks them down. Not always on purpose, but with absolute accuracy. Then he devotes all his attention to them. And unites what is often mutually exclusive. Past and future, for example. Or function and form. The clever moderation of this dialectic, which creates friction, makes stories exciting and things come alive, is perhaps his greatest talent—alongside his obvious talent for outlining the contours of an entire galaxy with just a few pencil strokes.
He achieved his international breakthrough in 2007 with the overwhelmingly detailed illustrated book Cosmic Motors, after studying transportation design in Pforzheim and designing concept cars for Volkswagen and Bugatti for several years. However, the automotive industry was and is just one of the 47-year-old’s playing fields, and he is passionate about questioning everything. This is how he became Hollywood’s favorite utopian overnight in 2013. Blockbusters such as »Tron: Legacy«, »Oblivion« or »Top Gun: Maverick« visibly benefit from his creativity, which creates more than cinematic superficiality.

 

Tron: Legacy Hero Light Cycle, 2010

Cosmic Motors already makes this clear. Daniel retreated to Brazil for two years in the mid-2000s to create this utopian work in the spirit of his role model Syd Mead. »Syd or Harley Earl had a big influence on me«, he still says today. The fictional world of Cosmic Motors revolves around vehicles from a fantastic galaxy that are a mixture of de-militarized fighter jets and racing and luxury cars inspired by the breath of the past. But it is not only the content of the book that is remarkable, but also its form. As a reader, you can really feel how the ideas came to paper, from the first draft to the final artwork to the digital rendering. »The play with timelines, i.e. the blending of past, present and future, is totally fascinating for me. What-if mind games are like a drug for me. This creates spaces without rules and alternative worlds that don’t even seem that impossible given the infinity of the cosmos.« Time, it quickly becomes clear, is a major theme in Daniel’s oeuvre. His second book, The Timeless Racer even has the theme in its title and is dedicated to a time-traveling racing driver who commutes between the years 1916 and 2615. »I am fascinated by the thought of what will become of racing teams or traditional brands in the distant future when they look back not just a few decades, but entire centuries. What would a Porsche collection look like in the year 2600?« For Daniel, these are not questions driven by materialism. He only asks them because for him they always involve people. He goes to great lengths to create elaborate backstories that inevitably raise the question of how much we as subjects cling to the past. Legacies, according to Daniel, can also be a burden. »References are important. But it does bother me how much history we have to live with. The design library and the amount of unspoken guidelines is enormous. Only a few car manufacturers are exempt from this, Koenigsegg for example.« Mass manufacturers are inevitably more committed to the past. The convinced enthusiast, who sees mobility as an uplifting form of existence, is aware of these constraints, but nevertheless questions every convention: »At a motor show in the 1920s, there was no reference to the past. The question of looking back did not even arise.« Today, the design of major brands always carries the baggage of the past with it, especially in terms of design.

The Timeless Racer Masucci X-7A

The mass market has thus been robbed of a large part of its revolutionary power. As an example, Daniel cites BMW’s kidney grille, whose actual function as a radiator opening has been obsolete for decades, but is indispensable for the brand’s recognition value. An implicit prevention of radical new beginnings—and an abstraction of the origin, to the point of absurdity. It is clear that creative courage seems rare for designers who think far beyond normal boundaries. »Renault had a progressive design in the early 2000s that I really liked—with Vel Satis or Avantime. Economically, however, it was a disaster; the masses found these cars rather challenging.« You begin to understand why Daniel is not head of design at Volkswagen today, but instead works for Singer, for example, where small series of Porsche cars modified down to the last detail are produced for absolute enthusiasts. But he points out: »Even with such expensive prestige brands, sentimental buyers are the majority. It’s mostly about looking back and longing.« As a result, there is no need to reinvent everything when it comes to restomods. Daniel has therefore found his own personal niche, where he experiences creative freedom in various projects. »Many industrial designers establish themselves in a genre and are constantly looking for new forms of expression. The automotive industry is very receptive to this. I do it the other way around and have found my own individual design language. I then apply this to different genres.«

 

1990 Porsche 911 restored and modified by Singer Vehicle Design

 

His recognizable signature is an advantage in our noisy world. But it also comes with the risk of falling victim to an inner coziness or a dangerous, misunderstood sovereignty. »Routine can quickly lead you down a slippery slope.« But Daniel seems far removed from this. He designed a very real, autonomous racing car for Roborace back in 2015. »You can’t download a template. You don’t have a visual library for this product class, you can’t look anywhere to see how others do it. Such projects are the cream of the crop in vehicle design.« His Robocar was a blessing, but also a challenge. Radical design is rarely perfect straight away. »We had to massage the shape for a long time. There are unwritten rules, like a beat. You have to learn them, because the laws of aesthetics cannot simply be overridden.«

Robocar, Roborace

 

Anyone who creates real racing cars, Formula 1 designs or luxury sports cars, advises Elon Musk’s SpaceX, designs motorcycles for Lotus or airplanes for the movie »Top Gun« needs their own design language. For Daniel, this means: industrial elegance without too much provocation, plus genuine futurism despite tangible timelessness. »This is helpful for my work on the film, because the current zeitgeist has no place in a sci-fi movie like »Oblivion«. You want to create as much distance from the real world as possible.« As a creative craftsman, he always starts from the three-dimensional object and merges simple basic volumes into a complex whole whose original geometric forms remain legible. This creates sovereignty. »I find many other designs too loud, too tinkered with, and therefore tiring after prolonged viewing.« Paradoxically, this makes them uninteresting in the long term, says Daniel. As is so often the case, the great art lies in omission. »With simple designs, everything has to be right: Balance, surface quality, proportion. Nothing should be hidden behind anything else.«

 

Top Gun: Maverick Darkstar Jet, 2022

The vehicles in Cosmic Motors or The Timeless Racer are up to the task. And they look amazingly functional—just like his movie vehicles. »There’s a reason for that«, says Daniel. A future in which everything is wireless and completely digital would not be visually entertaining. »When it comes to certain fantasy machines, I’m a fan of real switches, screws and rivets.« He gives an example: »The Bubbleship in »Oblivion« stands for a very special feeling in the movie—it has to convey that. If an actor has to flee from a dicey situation and has nothing to do, there’s no drama. That’s why we gave the spaceship classic toggle switches for a key scene—and not a touch screen, which would be closer. That’s a creative decision.«
Director Joseph Kosinski has relied on Daniel’s talents for many years. The current »Top Gun« remake with Tom Cruise at the wheel of the Darkstar Jets was once again an absolute dream job for Daniel. Even if the discourse with a fictional world means hard work and a lot of research in the industry. »It’s the best part of my job, reading into new industries and opening new doors.« Given the many meta-levels in art, it’s surprising how analytical he is, tracing the mechanics of our world. »I love airplanes and their design, but I immediately asked myself: How do we approach this now? The design has to be worthy of a blockbuster, but also impress professionals—and not confuse the average moviegoer. A balancing act.«

Hollywood’s Oblivion Bubbleship, 2013

In the case of »Top Gun: Maverick«, Daniel worked closely with Lockheed’s research department. He took the SR-71 Blackbird as his model—still the fastest airplane in the world today—and then embarked on his typical mental journey through time. What, he asked himself, would the Lockheed engineers from the 1960s be doing today? It’s a role play, very similar to method acting. It is precisely this approach that makes Daniel’s work so authentic, detailed and coherent.

What’s more, even as a boy he scribbled cars on the back of technical drawings. They were the documents of his father, who worked as an engineer. The family lived on the Baltic Sea in the GDR in the 1980s. The icons of those years were Ferrari Testarossa or Lamborghini Countach. But Daniel didn’t paint any specific brands, just »visions of tin cans making noise and thundering off somewhere«. He would certainly have become a brilliant engineer. Today, Daniel lives in Florida with his wife and daughter and designs for international clients, quite a few of whom remain a secret. The fact that he found his dream job is down to chance: As a 15-year-old, he read about the profession of vehicle designer in a car magazine while getting bread rolls. Until then, this world had been completely hidden from him. He still owns the newspaper today, which underlines his romantic inclination, which also flows into his work. He is a sentimental futurist, without a doubt. And he is aware of the privilege of engaging in an activity so well aligned with his talents. Perhaps the involuntary reinvention of his person—largely decoupled from his German origins and his supposed predestination as a car designer—has also helped him to maintain a very special freedom of spirit. Life in the USA is certainly conducive to this. Unlike in Europe, Daniel is not confronted with his past on a daily basis. Instead, he is shaped by unstoppable progress. He grew up without the internet, had his first home computer as a teenager, was studying when Photoshop was released and was working his first jobs while Google Images and YouTube were taking off. He sees this radical change as great, but accidental luck: »As a student, it took me a whole year to find out which pen certain designers were working with. Today, there are 16-year-olds who are super-talented in illustration techniques. The internet and tutorials are changing the way creative minds develop. The discovery process has shrunk from years to minutes. That has consequences.« Daniel leaves it open which ones.

 

 

Daniel Simon — a visionary all-rounder

 

His opinion on the disruptive power of digital technologies and artificial intelligence in particular changes on a weekly basis, he confirms. »Basically, I do have extreme reservations.« He by no means rules out the positive impact of technological progress on our collective society. »However, we are already insidiously yet inexorably dependent on algorithms and are constantly connected to networked devices. The matrix is real!« Nevertheless, Daniel works intensively with AI design software. »Midjourney and Vizcom are unbelievable, they seemed to come out of nowhere. But these are just harmless creative examples. Nobody can imagine where we will be in ten years’ time. Especially as we have great difficulties with exponential growth. People tend to be linear.« He is deeply surprised at how easily people are taken in and distracted by the playful element of artificial intelligence.
Because the extent of the threat is unforeseeable. And already real today. Artists rightly feel threatened by AI. »We believe we can create things that no one has ever seen before. That’s arrogant! Because all forms have actually already been invented. So we are more likely to mix what already exists. Only the possible combinations are infinite. So designers are curators, DJs so to speak. How we design the mixing process is what makes us unique.« Daniel is convinced that the only thing that sets us apart from AI and its brute force design is our inability to achieve astronomical computing power—in other words, a deficit.

 

 

DSX Mistral Concept Helicopter

 

»A computer makes art? How laughable! A computer writes a screenplay? What the hell! What is art?«, he asks. His answer: In art, much cannot be quantified—or judged without bias. In design, it can. That is where the difference lies. »Therefore, it is conceivable that in the future we will prefer to rely on the work of human curators—if we can afford to. However, AI will then flood the market of the lower consumer classes. Which will further separate the elite. This theory can also be applied to car design.«
A world with even more demarcation and even more tensions does not seem to be in his interest. Daniel relies on humanity where he can afford it. It is his commandment of creative existentialism. For him, the creative process has a high quality in its lengthiness, its complexity and the inherent risk of failure. Nevertheless, he knows that AI will revolutionize vehicle design, which is extremely resource-intensive. Car manufacturers would certainly not miss out on this savings potential. The believer in the future sees too much temptation in the sweet fruit of artificial intelligence.
He recently read a comment by author Laura Preston, who described how an AI bot was meant to make her work easier—but instead tempted her to start thinking like a bot herself. The bot started to train her. Daniel sees a familiar and recurring pattern in this feedback loop, which fatally sidelines the human element: »Our efforts to maximize likes mean that virtually all content looks the same. The machine has decided what is cool. And the algorithm lulls us into believing that we are creative. That sums up my concerns about AI very well.«

 

 

Sketch Robocar, Roborace

 

As a true utopian, Daniel therefore takes a decidedly critical view of innovations. In his opinion, many trends are not subjected to sufficient scrutiny. In addition, capitalism has discovered design as a sales tool and is squeezing every last drop out of it. A strong opinion from someone whose business thrives on progress. But someone like Daniel can afford to criticize the system from within. He makes his point: »We don’t really need the amount of new vehicles and extremely short model cycles. That drives me crazy. This inherent obsolescence is ethically indefensible. My work is directed against this wastefulness every second.« But he also knows that our world is complex and his voice is very quiet. As a designer, he nevertheless pleads for more longevity. His simple and smart shapes have a deeper message. »I have long since withdrawn from the vortex of more and more. It’s a hamster wheel that can be very tiring for a creative mind.«

 

 

Robocar, Roborace

 

The examination of Daniel’s design thus reveals a subliminal agenda. It is personal expression, bold speculation and imaginative dreaming. But it is also a reflection on social responsibility. He clearly distances himself from a political interpretation, but admits: »Economy, science and our coexistence do play a role.« The man for whom utopias are part of everyday life is shocked, for example, »by how much dystopias fascinate the masses. The previews at the movies are almost all carnage—with shallow heroes who save the world«. So his job in entertainment is definitely fraught with conflict—philosophically and very practically.
Nevertheless, he has no doubts about his work. He simply sees himself as having a great responsibility. »I do wonder what I will look back on one day. What will people remember about me and my work? A question that AI certainly doesn’t reflect on.«

PUBLISHED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN CHAPTER №IX »WORK In PROGRESS« — WINTER 2023/24