Fresh off winning ‘Car of the Year’ honors from The Chicago Athenaeum Museum, for its design of the Microlino 2.0 Electric Car, a new offering in urban mobility that channels the classic bubble cars of the 1950s for inspiration, Samuel Chuffart and Davide Cannata of ICONA Design Group sat down (virtually) with GDN to talk about the car, their paths, and what’s next for the young, Italian design house, which, in addition to designing cars and other forms of transport, has its hands in a host of innovative products conceived for our changing world; think autonomous cars, wearables that clean the air, and robots that deliver take out.

GDN:  Gentlemen, good morning, and congratulations on winning a 2021 Good Design Award and scooping ‘Car of the Year’ honors for the Microlino. To begin, how did you get your start?

Samuel Chuffart:  I went to the Art Center College of Design in California and graduated in 1998. My first experience was at BMW, in Germany. I had an internship in the advanced design studio. That experience was not so different than the way we work today at ICONA, which is to think outside the box, think advanced design, and, project yourself into the future.
After BMW, I went to Nissan. Nissan was an interesting brand to me because it was at the very bottom. I received very good guidance from a former teacher who asked me what brand I’d like to work for. I told him, “I don’t know but a brand I like.” He said, “What are you crazy? You’re a designer! If you go to a brand you like you’re not going to change it.” My answer was that “this is very interesting way to look at things. Where there is a challenge there is something to do.”
After Nissan, I went to Range Rover in the UK. It was a brand I always loved and one with some family connection. There, I worked on the N45, the one you see on the street today. My design for it was immediately selected. It was a bit of a dream come true.
While in London, I was offered the opportunity to become the chief designer at Bertone, the famous Italian car maker. For 20-30 years, many of the Lamborghinis came out of Bertone. It was the Gandini era. Sadly, the company went bankrupt. I’m still working today at ICONA with the same CEO, Dr. Gaudio.

Davide Cannata:  Fantastic man, fantastic man…

Samuel:  Yes, wonderful man… a true visionary. Dr. Gaudio is 81 years old, and he thinks better than me. It was his vision to make ICONA a global brand. We formed the firm in 2009. I proposed the name because it means iconic. Then we moved on to China because it has an extraordinary number of projects these days and it is open to new ideas. Traditional manufacturers would never come up with the idea of Microlino. We initially started with three people. And now we are seventy-eight designers working globally from studios in Italy, China, and the US.

We initially started with three people. And now we are seventy-eight designers working globally from studios in Italy, China, and the US

GDN:  Did you and Davide meet at Bertone?

Samuel:  No, Davide joined ICONA in 2017.

Davide:  Before ICONA I worked here in Italy for a Chinese brand, JC Motors (JAC). I was there for seven years and was looking for a change. When you work at the same place for such a long time you cannot open your mind to anything new. At ICONA you can work for a lot of different companies, Chinese, American, etc., and touch something new every time. For me this is really, really important because I believe a car designer can, potentially, be a designer of everything.

Samuel:  This is an important point that Davide is making because what he is talking about is transformation, not just transformation at ICONA but with car design. Microlino is an example of an everyday product. We are not just styling and thinking about fashion. We are more like surgeons. We have to be accurate and find a balance. With the emergence of artificial intelligence, we have to understand how we are going to consider a product for the future. As Davide followed the Microlino from beginning to end, I’m going to let him tell you more about the story…

Davide:  For Microlino we did very particular research. Like Samuel said, not just automotive research. The approach we used was a product design approach because to do something different in the world today it’s necessary to look around, not just in one sector. We began by looking at trends, lifestyles, and the target group. For this car, it’s a young user. The design is also minimal, so we looked to the past for inspiration—at vintage work. For Microlino we looked at the Isetta, by BMW, not in order to remake it but for its simplicity.
In the last two years at ICONA, we’ve been always talking about the Smart City project. Within Smart City lies the sector Smart Mobility. Smart Mobility is Microlino because it’s a small car, an electric car, really urban, and really fun. It wasn’t an easy process. We had to do a lot of compromising with engineering, color, material, the production line, cost, etc. We presented the final model at the Salone in Milano in September 2021. In November, ICONA presented the same model in China. And, just a few days ago, we received news that the production line has started.

GDN:  Where are the cars being manufactured?

Davide:  Here in Torino. The manufacturer is Italian.

GDN:  How do you maintain the singular vision for the car when it’s being introduced to so many markets, where the regulations and the variables are different? How do you stay true to the original design?

Davide:  With the help of our engineering partners. The client requested that we keep Microlino’s dimensions to a minimum for it to be a key car in the Japanese market. Thanks to the engineering team at Cecomp we managed to achieve this goal.

Samuel:  That’s why we say production is always teamwork. The engineers are partnering with us to pursue a single vision. The idea is to keep the beauty of the original sketches throughout the process. It’s a real challenge. The final point is to keep it simple. That is the beauty of Apple. They’ve been very successful making things that are extremely complex and intricate yet look bloody simple. Their products are easy to use, easy to look at, and easy to understand. If you look at cars that you don’t like, it’s mostly because of incoherence, things that are contradicting each other, things that don’t tell the same story. Too many messages create confusion, like noise or too much make up, this kind of thing.

If you look at cars that you don’t like, it’s mostly because of incoherence. Too many messages create confusion, like noise or too much make up…

GDN:  Samuel, you mentioned in a past interview an expression that is near and dear to my heart which is “less is more”. It’s really hard to be a good editor. I think this is an essential quality of exceptional designers. Can you talk about the editing process; how you went about deciding what to keep and what to take out of the car?

Samuel:  When you talk to people about car design today, they are less interested in it than they used to be. If you ask them why, they answer: “Well you know cars all look the same”. Can we criticize them for it and say they are not very knowledgeable? Not quite! They are just overloaded with information and have very little time to make a choice. Which is exactly why I believe the Microlino will be a fantastic success. Why? Because its design is very pure. The car is extremely simple, extremely efficient, and cute on top of that! People simply love it!
It can be understood in a singular feature. It has a front-opening door, and the headlights are outside the door, mimicking a frog or a snail. So, you have this vehicle that is totally unique. If this car were in nature, you’d think that’s a very different type of animal.
This ‘less is more’ approach has always been important to me. I knew before going to Bertone that Gandini used to tell its designers “when you make a design, put all your ideas together. Take the most important, key features that make up the design. Then delete, delete, and delete. Then, when you delete everything that is not necessary, delete one more thing”.

Davide:  I totally agree with Samuel. The most difficult part of designing the Microlino was maintaining a very clean face. With design, it’s easy to overdo it. It’s hard to be simple.

Samuel:  Many of our clients, when we make a car, consider us competitors. They look at fashion. But we know that fashion is going to last maybe 4, 5, 8 years, something like this. With Microlino the approach is a little different. I would say the approach is closer to a Land Rover. It’s about making an icon. Making something that you look at today and you absolutely love. And when you look at it again in ten years, in twenty years, it still seems nice. When I was at Land Rover, that was my main concern; to make something timeless. The goal here is to make something that will eventually become a Classic. Porsche is the same; Mini is the same; it’s that kind of car…

The Microlino will be a fantastic success because its design is very pure. The car is extremely simple, extremely efficient, and cute on top of that! People simply love it!

GDN:  You mentioned in an Interview with OnTime Automotive that one of the challenges you faced designing the Volcano was balancing power and beauty. What challenges did you face designing the Microlino?

Samuel:  With the Volcano, which I was hands deep in designing with my team, it’s a super sports car so you need to show the power. Therefore, you have a lot of features that do that. But with the restriction of a realistic package and the philosophy of ‘less is more’ you can barely sit in the car. You can exaggerate certain things but unfortunately when you do that you start compromising the fundamentals.
Very often we use graphics to lie about what the design is. We try to convince you that the car is of a different shape somehow. What’s important is that the design feature be true to the product concept. What does the car want to say? What does the car mean? If you look at Microlino, it’s an egg with a front door and it looks like a little animal. That is the essence of the car. It’s almost like a toy. If you look at the Audi TT the car is extremely pure. It can be designed in three lines. If you can illustrate your car in three lines you have a good design.

Davide:  I agree. With Microlino the big challenge was to make a dashboard into a door. When you think about dashboards, they have storage. With Microlino you cannot have storage because you need to open the dashboard. This is the really strange part of this car. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to incorporate grips and clips for the phone. That’s the reason also for the dashboard’s shape; it’s a tube on to which you can clip objects. I remember this part of the work. It was extremely difficult. But it also was an opportunity to create a new design concept for a dashboard.

Samuel:  The two main issues of this car were achieving a sense of stability and a sense of safety. We worked on the volume, especially in the front, and in the rear. At first, we were like “hmmmm, maybe it’s less of a tear drop.” At the end of the day, we improved the car.  We still have the teardrop feeling but we got more stability and a greater sense of safety which is truly important for a vehicle that you enter from the front.

If you can illustrate your car in three lines you have a good design

GDN:  What was the gestation period for the Microlino, and where we will we see it for sale? 

Samuel:  For the design it’s been 3 years. Now we have them in the shop. I’ve seen them in France. Our guys in the shop are sending us pictures. They’ve started selling the car in France and in Italy. Soon they will spread Europe. The car is also planned for China and Japan but I’m not sure when they will arrive there.

Davide:  They want to follow the new style of sales… shopping online and no showroom. The new Fiat 500 can be bought through a website. They intend to follow the same model.

GDN:  What will be the legacy of the Microlino?

Samuel:  The car we’re talking about today is one of the most unusual cars I’ve worked on. To a large degree, this is the start of a ‘cult’ car. There are few cult cars… the VW Beetle, the Mini. This will be one of them. I have no doubt.

This is the start of a ‘cult’ car. There are few cult cars… the VW Beetle, the Mini. This will be one of them

GDN:  What are you working on at the moment? 

Samuel:  A lot of things I cannot tell you.

GDN:  Is there anything you can tell us?

Samuel:  I can tell you something. There are 16 cars we are working on right now. A lot of them, as you can imagine, are for the Chinese market because they are the active ones. One of them is for Davide’s ex-company, JAC. We have some activity as well with European car manufacturers. This year we worked on a Maserati for the Italians. In America we are working with Nissan. Remember the EdisonFuture? The big SUV?  We are working with them to do something a little more sophisticated than the cyber truck. The cyber truck was sophisticated in its way but extreme. Here it’s about making something more acceptable and sophisticated for our clients. We never talk about us. 

GDN:  Are you opening other studios?  

Samuel:  We just opened one in New Zealand for quite a simple reason. It goes hand in hand with our strategy for the southern hemisphere. From New Zealand you can reach Singapore, Australia, India, and Vietnam. As you know we cannot easily cover these markets from Shanghai. There is a big jump coming in India, post-covid. Everything these days is post-covid.
This opportunity came about because one of our design managers, Anton Gallons, who has been with us many years and worked with me on the Volcano, is a New Zealander. So rather than lose a person we opened a new location. Also, my wife, my kids… they are New Zealanders. We are doing commuting right now. Most of my time I spend where the fire is. The fire is usually in Shanghai. I’d love to spend more time in Italy. I haven’t seen Davide in years. 
But, again, Covid is summarizing a lot of stories. When you say Covid everybody understands. We were happily surprised during Covid, about how much the ICONA model of working made for a very smooth transition because we work online a lot. It’s always been that way. We’ve had all the tools for working this way in place for some time, but we haven’t used them quite as much as we are using them now. As a global company it was quite nice that we didn’t have to go through the transition of working this way (remotely). As a global company we’ve made the planet a little bit smaller. The jet lag is the only thing we cannot change!

• All images courtesy of ICONA Design Group