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A Jaguar Man’s Jaguar: Designer Ian Callum Does the Mark 2 His Way

Arpingstone via Wikimedia Commons The Jaguar Mark 2 (a 1963 model is pictured here) features Jaguar’s rounded, elegant mid-century styling.

  Ian Callum, the design director of Jaguar, has — strangely enough — never actually owned one of his company’s cars. But he’s rebuilding one to his own specifications. Slowly taking shape at Classic Motor Cars in Bridgnorth, England, is a very special 1962 Jaguar Mark 2 that incorporates Mr. Callum’s subtle design upgrades.

“Being a designer, I can’t leave my cars alone,” Mr. Callum said in a telephone interview. “Much as I admire people who restore cars and bring them back to original specifications, I can’t do that myself.”

The Mark 2 will have reduced chrome and incorporate such features as added “in period” vents for better air flow. It will have a 5-speed full-synchromesh gearbox.

Classic Motor Cars Ian Callum, at Classic Motor Cars, in Bridgnorth, England. “I’m also designing some new body parts on my computer at home, and the process can be time-consuming,” he said. The famous XK engine will be under the hood, but with an upgrade from the original 3.8 liters to 4.2.

“As a designer, Ian knows exactly what he wants,” Nick Goldthorp, managing director of Classic Motor Cars, wrote in an email. “So we have to follow and interpret his changes in great detail.”

According to Mr. Callum, he’d originally thought that C.M.C. would “hate me” if he insisted on modifications to a classic like the Mark 2, but when the well-known Jaguar restoration facility let it be known that it was game (it actually offers several upgrades for the model, including alternator conversion kits and central locking), the search was on for a suitable car.

Mr. Callum is the designer responsible for the new Jaguar F-Type convertible, as well as such models as the XK, XF, XJ and a number of Aston Martins. It’s his design language – capturing the essence of the classic models in a way that’s determinedly modern – that is stamped on the company’s products. That makes this new/old Jaguar “a small project,” but one that’s close to his heart.

“It’s my personal indulgence,” Mr. Callum said. “An E-Type would have been too obvious for me, but I’ve just always loved the Mark 2. This project is about the aesthetics of the car; simplifying it as much as possible.”

C.M.C. said the Mark 2 would be finished in about six months, at which point Mr. Callum plans to drive it to work. That’s unless he takes one of the other classics in his garage. Mr. Callum, who grew up in Scotland but has decidedly trans-Atlantic tastes, owns a 1990 Mini Cooper that’s been “tricked up a bit,” a 1932 Ford Model B “Deuce Coupe” with a Ford Windsor engine that makes about 430 horsepower and a custom 1956 Chevy Two-Ten that’s likely to get kitted out with Corvette components.

“Nothing I own is standard,” he said. On Mr. Callum’s classic car wish list: a Triumph TR4 or TR6, and a 1932 Ford roadster. “I love buying parts for hot rods,” he said.

The Boss: From Apple to Nest Labs, Always a Designer

During summers, we would return to Detroit, where my grandfather, a high school teacher and later a school superintendent, would teach my brother and me how to fix things around the house and build projects, like a soapbox racer, in his workshop.


Computers have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. In grade school, I took a summer programming class, using a mainframe computer with punch cards. My grandfather helped me buy an Apple II; he didn’t know anything about computers but recognized that, for me, it was an important tool — just like his hammers and drills. In high school, a friend and I started a small company, Quality Computers. We worked from his parents’ basement, reselling Apple II hardware and writing software.


In 1987, I entered the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, to study computer engineering. But my classes didn’t satisfy my interest in computers, so I founded an educational software company and another company to design computer processors for the Apple IIgs model.


After I graduated in 1991, I moved to Silicon Valley to pursue my dream job: working with General Magic, whose founders created the first Apple Macintosh. I knocked on their door until they hired me later that year. I spent four years there, developing hardware and software to create personal hand-held communications devices, including Sony’s MagicLink. In 1995, I pitched a hand-held product to the C.E.O. of Philips, the Dutch electronics giant. He hired me to build its mobile computing group to develop the Velo and Nino personal digital assistants.


Music has always been one of my passions. Philips wanted to expand in the United States, and the company named me vice president for business development to manage its digital music strategy and investments. Being a corporate guy wasn’t enough for me, so I left to start Fuse Systems, a consumer electronics company. But it foundered when the Internet bubble burst in 2001. That same year, Apple Computer hired me as a consultant in designing what would become the iPod digital music player. Computers plus music plus Apple — it was another dream gig.


Eight weeks later, I approached Steve Jobs with the initial iPod concept and was put in charge of building and leading the development team. One iPod led to another, eventually becoming 18 generations of iPods — and then three generations of the iPhone.


My wife also worked at Apple. Eventually I wanted to spend more time with our two children, and I also wanted a break. So in 2008, I stepped away as senior vice president of Apple’s iPod division and became a strategic adviser to Mr. Jobs. He was an incredible influence on how I think about bringing products to market.


After leaving Apple, we decided to build a “green” home in Lake Tahoe, Calif. While researching heating and cooling systems, I realized that the thermostat was ripe for innovation. I founded Nest Labs to build the self-programming Nest Learning Thermostat. When owners are away, sensors adjust the temperature to save energy. The thermostat has been selling in the United States and Canada for 20 months, but because the device is Wi-Fi connected, we know that it is being used in more than 80 countries.


We designed the thermostat for do-it-yourself installation, and we even include a custom screwdriver in each box. I think my grandfather would have liked that. 

Ultimate Shopping Summer Weekend With Jewelry Designer Jennifer Meyer

 

Combine the best of both worlds, shopping and being near the beach, by starting out your retail adventure in Venice. While boho-chic Abbot Kinney is the main go-to, some of the Westside’s most exciting retailers are setting up shop on an up-and-coming stretch of Lincoln Boulevard. Start at Pearl Drop (328 S. Lincoln Blvd.), the latest retail offering from longtime L.A. designer (and Jack Nicholson spawn) Jennifer Nicholson, who stocks her eclectic digs with hand-dyed wares by fellow L.A. clothier Gregory Parkinson (Lily Collins is a fan), statement baubles by famed hippie jewelry label Alex & Lee as well as her own namesake collection. Pick up Pendleton jackets and other heritage-heavy gear at Tradesman, the plywood-accented men’s shop owned by former Gap visual merchandising vets Doug Behner and Ruben Leal (1807 Lincoln Blvd.). For a jewelry fix, All For the Mountain/Sacred Door (2118 Lincoln Blvd.) showcases local artist Carly Margolis’ futuristic-meets-tribal necklaces and the occasional tie-dye workshop. For drinks, the intimate rooftop at Hotel Erwin (1697 Pacific Ave.) is ideal for sipping a blood orange julep at sunset before grabbing a lobster roll at breezy new seafood spot Salt Air (1715 Pacific Ave.).

PHOTOS: Best of Hollywood: 28 Ways to Create a Perfect Summer Weekend

SATURDAY

Start with brunch at Barney Greengrass (9570 Wilshire Blvd.), the rooftop lox-plate purveyor at Barneys New York that CFDA-nominated jewelry designer Jennifer Meyer calls “delicious and decadent.” After drooling over Meyer’s delicate, playful gold pieces and Alexander Wang cutout bathing suits, head down the street to try on sleek foot candy from supermodel Anja Rubik’s new capsule collection for Giuseppe Zanotti (9536 Brighton Way). On Rodeo Drive, engage in some shopping damage at Carolina Herrera’s new CH boutique, which carries her classic, ladylike, lower-priced line as well as her collection of crisp, white button-down shirts (230 N. Rodeo Dr.). And don’t miss Saint Laurent’s too-cool-for-school metallic sandals and tailored blazers at its marble-and-chrome-filled temporary digs (469 N. Rodeo Dr.). “I’m obsessed with everything sort of Saint Laurent — Hedi Slimane’s new grunge everything!” says Meyer. Next, head over to La Brea, where a stretch between 2nd Street and Beverly Boulevard is shaping up to be one of the new great shopping zones. Pre-spree, grab a chicken salad and Greek yogurt toast with a side of people watching at The Sycamore Kitchen’s outdoor patio (143 S. La Brea Ave). Then hit up the second outpost of Venice design mainstay A+R (171 S. La Brea Ave.) — owned by style journalist and curator Rose Apodaca and one-time film editor husband Andy Griffith — which is the place to find limited-edition welded steel chairs by artist Oskar Zieta mingling with inexpensive Pantone color coffee mugs. High-end vintage emporium What Goes Around Comes Around (159 S. La Brea Ave.) has a major collection of ’80s Chanel and a secret back VIP room full of rare Alaia and Valentino goods that top Hollywood stylists like Karla Welch love to pull. Other top shops include Undefeated, the superstore that helped put American sneaker culture on the map (112.5 S. La Brea Ave.), men’s shop General Quarters (153 S. La Brea Ave.) and the airy, namesake boutique (318 N. La Brea Ave.) from T-shirt maven Cheyann Benedict, the founder of C&C California. Show off your new garb at Petty Cash Taqueria (7360 Beverly Blvd.), a casual contemporary Mexican spot with a good scene, even better octopus-infused tacos and Mezcal for days.

PHOTOS: 26 of Summer's Most Anticipated Movies: 'Man of Steel,' 'Wolverine,' 'The Lone Ranger'

SUNDAY

Grab some eggs and hash browns at trusty mainstay 101 Coffee Shop (6145 Franklin Ave.), which lures names like Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan, and then head five blocks east to Counterpoint Records & Books (5911 Franklin Ave.) to peruse a mighty selection of gently loved art and design tomes. Next, get ready to explore the best of the Eastside and downtown. In Los Feliz, stop in to Confederacy (4661 Hollywood Blvd.), the mostly menswear outpost co-owned by top stylist Ilaria Urbinati, who works with Bradley Cooper and Nina Dobrev. Less than a mile east, gawk at the artsy, affected street style in Silver Lake’s Sunset Junction, where DJ Kevin Carney and wife Bo have just expanded their popular Mohawk General Store (4011 W. Sunset Blvd.) to include a stand-alone men’s shop filled with all the Dries Van Noten gear fit for a modern moneyed hipster. Farther along Sunset is of-the-moment leather maker Clare Vivier’s flagship shop (3339 Sunset Blvd.) as well as Gogosha Optique (3208 1/2 Sunset Blvd.), with an expertly curated collection of head-turning Mykita and Thierry Lasry shades that has a big fan in Lady Gaga. It’s then just a 10-minute drive to downtown’s Arts District. Find preppy, fair trade blazers and gingham button-downs at Apolis Common Gallery (806 E. 3rd Street) and pieces by the likes of Vivienne Westwood and Timo Weiland at former stylist Thed Jewel’s graffiti-decorated 12345 (811 Traction Ave.). Cap the day with an indulgent slice of Mexican chocolate pie from the Pie Hole (714 Traction Ave.).

See more perfect summer weekends below:

Music With Breakout Star Skylar Grey

Art With Director Phil Lord

Food: From Seafood Craze to Farmer's Market Bounty

Outdoors: Fun in the SoCal Sun

Pampering: Spa, Aaah

Romance: Date Nights (and Days)

Classic L.A.: Historic Hot Spots

The 1 Percent: Live in Luxury

Kids: Modern Family Adventures

Follow me on Twitter @sajilpl

Healthcare Is Broken. And This Designer Thinks She Can Fix It

 

 

Healthcare is notorious for being technophobic, clunky and downright ugly. No one knows this better than Gretchen Wustrack, who is trying desperately to change that.

 

Wustrack, who leads the Active Health group at the design and innovation firm IDEO in San Francisco, has spent 12 years trying to give the healthcare sector a much needed facelift through design. Her approach is part of a growing movement called human-centered design, which aims to redefine how people experience healthcare by focusing on their specific needs.

 

She is uniquely qualified to do this, having worked with Google to redefine the search giant’s food strategy, with the pharmaceutical industry to modernize clinical trials, and with Kaiser to increase patient engagement. Much of her work deals with talking with people — getting to the nitty-gritty of what they want and how they want to use different types of products. And that, she says, is what design is all about — understanding what people want. The problem with healthcare is that what patients, doctors and payers want is not always apparent, or complementary.

 

“There’s opportunity for design in healthcare in every nook and cranny,” she says. We sat down with her to learn more.

 

Wired: Why is design important for healthcare?


 

Gretchen Wustrack: Healthcare is kind of broken right now. There’s a lot of need for new thinking. That’s exactly where you bring design in – to think differently about a complex system and come up with fresh solutions. Our approach to design, which is human-centered, which is systemic, is exactly the right tool for deeply understanding the challenges, the people and finding new solutions.

 

I was brought up to think design was much more art, that it was about beautiful objects. It is that, but it’s also fundamentally about problem solving. It’s understanding where things can be better. That doesn’t mean things can’t be beautiful. I think that’s an incredible tactic for solving problems.  If we can create beautiful products and desirable apps and things that just make us engage on a visceral level, that’s a tool for getting people to do what they need to do to be healthy.

 

Wired: What are the challenges to bringing good design to health care?


 

Wustrack: The big challenge is that you’ve got all these players intersecting. You’ve got regulatory agencies. You’ve got healthcare providers. You’ve got insurers. You’ve got patients. To move the needle is really a challenge. It’s about creating a common vision. The time is ripe to make some big changes. It’s not all going to happen in one fell swoop. I think it can happen in small ways. We  might learn something from those smaller, more tailored experiences that can apply to the healthcare system at large.

 

I think that’s why there’s a real opportunity for startups. They’re identifying a need. They’re not trying to change the system in one fell swoop. They’re trying to meet the needs of a small group of patients or providers. If that works for that group of patients or those providers, or those insurers, then that becomes a bright spot that we can cultivate and spread hopefully.

 

Wired: How do you approach design in the context of health care? Is it designing better-looking products or better workflows within offices or hospitals?


 

Wustrack: It’s all that. I know it sounds really fuzzy, but I think that’s the power of design. It can tackle any – and all — of those challenges. We, as end users and potential patients, need solutions at every level, from the packaging our medication comes in to new healthcare services. What are the digital services that will help us become healthier faster? What are better experiences in the clinic or in the hospital? What are new ways physicians can communicate information to us that we’ll actually hear? Because most of the time they’re talking and we’re not picking it up.

 

We recently completed a project with a major pharmaceutical firm in the Bay Area to redesign the clinical trials system. That’s a big systemic challenge.

 

Wired: What was your approach to that?


 

Wustrack: One of the problems is this move from blockbuster drugs to a more personalized approach to medicine. They found that if they were to keep doing trials the same way, which has this incredible overhead, they’d go bankrupt. So it was about creating a more nimble system that could reach patients in more dispersed geographic areas. Keep those patients engaged throughout the trial so it lowers your recruiting requirements, basically make it a more distributed site model.

 

The idea we created with them was to leverage existing patient communities and networks of care providers who can reach new patient populations and support those networks. In addition there was leveraging of a ton of technology so you could do much more remote care, remote monitoring, telemedicine and then that allows patients to be in Des Moines instead of New York or San Francisco.

 

Wired: Has that been deployed?


 

Wustrack: They’re in that next phase of getting that to market.

 

Wired: There’s a lot of good products, but there’s also a lot of quackery. How do you decide what projects to take on?


 

Wustrack: One is really vetting our clients well. Our little group is pretty purpose driven. If we don’t think they really have the best interest of end users in mind, we might decline. We’re getting better at that.

 

A lot of the times clients come to us and they don’t’ have a specific solution in mind. In fact, we guide them against having a solution in mind. We want them to identify a problem that we help them vet. And then once we’re aligned on how we want to help people and meet needs, then we take on the design phase, the solution phase. Through design and through understanding end users we’re separating the quackery from the good science. We tend to design things that stand up, that really help people.

 

Wired: How do you tackle a new project?


 

Wustrack: In the first phase, it’s all about inspiration and understanding. We purposely bring people from very different disciplines on a project so that their different experiences can inform each other. It’s about understanding the end user. Then we go through this synthesis process which is this messy, post-it-notes-scattered- everywhere process, like you’re trying to make sense of what you just saw. It’s trying to find the big idea, the big opportunity. Once you have that you move into a design phase where you look at all the different ways you might solve for that need.

 

We go back out in the field and get a round of feedback, talk to our clients of course, and then refine and then do what’s needed on the backend.

 

Wired: I imagine there are lots of different personalities and skills you have to balance to put together the best team for a specific project. How does that process go down?


 

Wustrack: That’s a whole art in and of itself. There’s a whole group of people at IDEO focused on building the right team for the right challenge. Because I’m responsible for a project I’ve sold to a client, I may have in mind the types of designers that I think can solve that problem. I might even have specific people in mind, but it’s better to have the archetype of the right designer — a business designer, an industrial designer, a UX designer, or a human factor designer. Then I go to team building and that group helps me find the right people. So it’s not just discipline, it’s [a mix] of interest in this space and experience level and compatibly with other team members. It’s a whole puzzle that we have to put together.

 

Wired: It sounds like you work at a consulting firm. What differentiates you from McKinsey or BCG?

 

Wustrack: As we’ve evolved over the years, we’ve made that evolution from where design was form and some function to something that’s now really a strategic tool. Now when we frame design as a strategic tool for businesses and governments, it puts us head to head with the McKinseys of the world.

 

Wired: Why are you personally interested in this space?

 

Wustrack: [Some years back] I had emergency back surgery. I’d gone from a very active, healthy, health-conscious person to all of a sudden in the hospital, [as a] patient with no understanding. I was not empowered. All of a sudden you’re just totally vulnerable no matter how educated you are. It was such a scary, uncertain time. In a lot of ways you just lose your dignity because you’re not in control. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to recover. There was a chance I wouldn’t. That was scary. Living and working through that experience as a designer made me commit to that space all the more because there’s just so much need for helping patients and physicians.

 

More generally, I just love that creative process of identifying the big idea and then designing to it.