Interview with Miroslav Dimitrov, designer at Ferrari

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Miroslav Dimitrov is 25 years old car designer working for Ferrari in Maranello.

We met with Miro during our work on his personal website last year (miroslav-dimitrov.net). At the time he was doing some freelance projects and it was important for him to have a good looking portfolio website. It was a real pleasure working on his project and I was very happy when to hear about his contract with Ferrari.

I enjoyed our meetings with Miro and especially one January afternoon, when after meeting him we continued talking in the snowstorm for hours. Later I decided to do this interview.

Riznlog.com: Hi Miro, we’re happy to have you here! Introduce yourself with couple of words.

Miroslav Dimitrov: I would say I am a man who made his dreams come true. When I was a little boy I often hat to listen to my friends laughing when I said I want to be a car designer. Well, now I make a living as a car designer and currently I am working for Ferrari and I know there are still plenty of challenges to come and I strongly believe that a man must follow his dreams, always!

“Frankly, I feel great everywhere! I think a man should appreciate the best of every place and moment that is; otherwise he will never be complete and satisfied.”

How to become a car designer? What do you need to do to work for an icon such as Ferrari?

Well, good question! OK then, I will speak about car or transportation design in general because this is the topic. The sooner your passion towards design is discovered – the better. Luckily today we live in a well informed world and it is not that difficult to gather the information about where to start. Just drawing good isn’t enough to be a car designer. Drawing is very important in order to communicate – the better you sketch, the better you can translate your ideas and the better you can be understood. This is the language of the designers and this is how we communicate. But together with the drawing you should have a lot of knowledge that usually increases through years of experience. Good designers are not only talented professionals; they usually have a lot of other skills that concerns anything from the initial stages of the design, through to the development process and final production. There is an endless line that comes attached to the design process: ergonomy, engineering, costs, production feasibility, legislation …just to name a few

Before being accepted into a design university, you should already be able to present decent art and design skills. This means before going to university, it is highly recommended that you go to some kind of art and design school or college. If not, you can always practice on the side and improve your skills in order to get accepted into university. Once you’re there, you will start to learn a lot of things about the industry and slowly you will make contact with the studios. It is essential to be in a good school with strong relations because it will make your way into the industry much easier. Before getting a position as designer, many of us already have had one or more internships in design studio.

But there are always exceptions to the traditional way. There is a good friend of mine, from my Hometown, who is now working for Renault and he does not have any design degree from school or university, they just liked his work and invited him for an internship. Now he works as a designer for Renault. So, there is always a way to get in the Industry

Until recently there was only one way to design Ferraris – to work for Pininfarina. This is one of the biggest names in the business and working for them, you may happen to have the chance to working on Ferrari projects. The other way is to be working directly for the company – which is the case for me. I was lucky enough to be contacted by Ferrari and then invited here for an interview in Maranello.

What exactly directed you into the area of car design?

That’s easy )) Since I was very little I’ve always been attracted to cars. My grandparents told me, that while I wasn’t even be able to walk, I’ve been tied alongside the window in some very strange way (that only my grandmother knows about) in order to stand straight and watch the cars through the window from the 6th floor. As far as I know I had no problems staying like this for days – even trying to imitate the sounds too )))) Soon after this I am sure they all regretted it because at the age of 3-4 years, all books, papers and even the walls were given car decoration according to my taste! It was also the time when my passion towards the Arts was noticed and I was enrolled in a primary school with an extended education in Arts. In my 7th year I decided to combine my passion for cars with my skills in drawing into something I rarely heard of – Car Design! For this I owe many thanks to my teacher in Arts – Stoyan Dichev, for showing me the right place to go next – the professional high school/college in Kazanlak, Bulgaria where I received 5 years of excellent training and knowledge in Art and Design which later on allowed me to be accepted into Coventry School of Art & Design, directly in the second year of the transportation design course.

“I don’t find it necessarily to seek for an inspiration from the outside myself, it should always be within us and it is not depleting!”

Where do you take your inspiration from? Tells us about your work process and the principles you follow in the car design?

As many jobs in this field, design also requires a constant input of fresh and diverse ideas, shapes and visions. Therefore, on a daily basis we have to come up with these fresh ideas, and if that doesn’t flow from inside you (inside your heart if you prefer) – I mean the desire to create constantly new things and prove ourselves, then it would be very difficult to be motivated and always look for the inspiration that should put us in the right direction. All the creators have the flame in themselves, we – the design people are no exception. Yes, indeed there are cases when you may have been inspired by something around you. I am not saying there is something bad with inspiration from external sources, if that made in a proper and intelligent way it could bring very positive results to the product in the end – something cool that the customer would give his money for In my case however, I got inspired by the car as a single independent product, one that has its place on this earth.  A place that’s deserved and I find it quite annoying and inappropriate to make a car that looks like dress, bottle, a product of Macintosh, shoe, building or something else in this regard. This is a commercialization – a way to make the final customer associate something from his surroundings in the product of a car. For example, if we take the most expensive and loved classic cars from the past, all of which, have their character and do not resemble anything but their own automotive grace! At the end of the day, all the car makers want to make a profit and they are not interesting in making desirable products any more…but this is another topic of discussion. My inspiration is a complex mixture of my own desire to show myself combined with my love towards cars – moving sculptures. So I don’t find it necessarily to seek for an inspiration from the outside myself, it should always be within us and it is not depleting! We live in a world oversaturated with information, something that makes it even more difficult to concentrate on the job we’re doing.

Oh, I forgot about the work process! Firstly, of course we need to know what we’re doing – whether it is a family car, 4×4, sports car or a van. This immediately determines the proportions and the package of the car – how many people it must fit inside it, is the engine at the front or at the rear, is there any luggage space and how much of it there is. This already gives us a lot of information – I am talking about the ideal cases when we’re not constrained by too much of the existing packages and parts that are carried-over. These are usually the things that tie our hands and creativity.

Now the interesting part begins… I always start this stage with an A4 piece of paper and a pen or pencil, whichever you prefer. I produce a lot of small, fast sketches – trying to find interesting shapes that I like. I think and imagine what would I like to show with my design – why, how and what I want to achieve with it. This usually takes between 2 to 3, possibly up to 5 days, not more. Then I make a selection of these little sketches and I try to define them in different directions or concept directions, continually making more drawings. I begin to make bigger, more precise drawings, add more detail…and start to think about little things and shapes around the car. I also have to make more technical sketches and profiles in order to understand how this thing is made. Then the moment comes when we have to put all these concepts into 3D form, to see how it looks. Some companies or design studios develop 3D models, alongside clay model, which may not be that precise (the clay model), but gives a much better feeling of the car we’re designing. Additionally, the CAD Software gives much more precise data about the key technical parameters we need to consider, ergonomic data and others that could affect our design. One fully equipped design studio usually develops both, and there is constant feedback between the two. Whatever is done on the clay is scanned and put into 3D data and vice versa – the clay is milled with special milling machines and the 3D model is transferred in clay. This process varies, but usually takes 3-5 months (depending on the insensitivity of the project). After several proposals on a 1:1 scale, we chose the final design which goes into production. Today, this whole process may vary from under 1 year up to 2-3 years; there are many aspects that could affect the time taken.

to be continued …

The interview became too long, so I decided to make it in two parts. In the second part you will see sketches from Miroslav Dimitrov, designer at Ferrari.

Read part 2 >