Stripping back the layers of paint with Alexis Senter

SS24-003 - INTERVIEW BY STEPHEN COX

I first met Alexis Senter last year when we developed the website for her design consultancy, Le Future Classic. From our first conversation I felt as if Alexis had this aura of intrigue surrounding her, causing me to pose the question ‘so what do you actually do?’ multiple times.

Perhaps you could argue that Alexis’ boycott of social media makes answering that question not as straightforward as with others, however, stripping back the layers of paint to find out all her tastes, personality traits and so on is far more interesting than entering a conversation with pre-conceived ideas having pre-stalked someones socials.

With Alexis, those layers are full of great tastes, opinions and style. Our common love for classic designs such as the Porsche 911 platform which is iterated as opposed to re-developed is a highlight. On the flip side, Alexis revealing that her favourite colour is in fact purple, I would say is more of a low-light.

When you speak with someone like Alexis it reminds you to appreciate the depth of not only people, but the thought, ideas and work that goes in to the development of seemingly everyday objects. I’m aware cars are complex (a close friend completing a restoration reminds me of that every single week) however, I often forget just how complex and how much goes into every single aspect of creating this ‘thing’.

In this interview I catch up with Alexis on what she actually does, how she got into it and where she looks for inspiration outside of social media. Alexis is a truly fascinating person and I am so appreciative of her giving up her time to speak with me.

For reference and in support of Alexis' low profile I’ve combined her words with images from Shawny Sanders instagram profile. When I imagine Alexis’ stories combined with her LA background these are the romanticised visions I see.

Stephen: Firstly, thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it and know just how busy you are. To kick things off do you want to tell me a bit about yourself and what you actually do?

Alexis: I am a color & materials research and development designer for Automotive Studios.

Every automotive company has their own in-house design team and within that design team they have exterior, interior and digital designers who all help with the development of the product that you see when you walk into a dealership. Essentially, they are translating something from an initial sketch to a finished product. As much as you might think these people who are involved with the design would know how to manage and propose colors, they actually don't. In the color and material space, it takes someone with an affinity and a natural acuity for being able to see, not just color, but all the undertones, all the different shades, how everything will ultimately sit together and work together in the vehicle that you're about to experience.

Stephen: I know I can't just walk into a dealership and ask for any color. It seems like there are certain colors for certain cars. Why is that and how do you determine how many there will be or which color you're going to launch a car with?

Alexis: In the major automotive companies which are called OEMs, Original Equipment Manufacturers, the Toyotas, the BMWs, the Volkswagens of the world, the color is dictated by production constraints in the plant. A lot of vehicles like Volkswagen, Audis and Porsche’s share platforms. What you have to try to figure out is which vehicles are going down the same paint line. Do any of them share anything? That’s the first restriction that is placed on the vehicle and what ultimately ends up on it.

Next comes who is the intended market? What is the research we have for that market? What do we project as being the right things to go on this vehicle in the next three to four years? People are already starting to look at 2027, 2028 if it's a full model change, or, if it's a minor change you could be looking at 2026. When it comes to color it takes time because of all the testing of the exterior colors. We have to put the vehicle out in a deserted part of Arizona or Florida to make sure that it will last and last and last. Nothing will happen with that color. Nothing will happen with the leather, the textiles, etcetera. That's why it takes so long.

Stephen: If you're looking to 2027 for example, three years away, how do you predict what a consumer might want in terms of color? There must be a bit of guessing going on? I imagine colors like black, white or grey must typically be the best selling, but we always see trends, I feel like green cars are big right now, how do you predict that and influence consumers to make a certain choice that far ahead?

Alexis: It's not terribly scientific at times, to your point, and especially in the US market, a huge leasing market, everyone's thinking ‘what do I really want to look at for a couple years?’ The black, white, grays, silvers, charcoals of the world. White is also a huge exterior color here compared to Europe. In Europe that's associated with transit and delivery vehicles, and we don't have that same connotation here. So, what happens after the black, white, silver-gray space?

I will say whilst I don't really look to fashion other than occasionally footwear, it really sometimes just comes down to things that I'm feeling in the air. I'm constantly observing and watching. I'm not on social media. I think one of the biggest things for me and maybe because I started my career in the late nineties, I found myself just constantly observing and watching and picking up on threads of things. I am an avid reader, so I do take influences and inspiration even from world events and things that are happening and how that will influence the smaller day-to-day things. Then with COVID that’s shifted a lot of people's embrace of color. They became far more accepting of the green car or the yellow car or the bright blue car. Previously a lot of times you would only see those on higher-end vehicles. Porsche is very good at that. Lamborghini has blown it wide open, in fact I think it started with Lamborghini.

Alexis: Then, I think within the last few years, social media and fashion did create the shift away from black as always being the default chic thing to wear, it also doesn't show up online very well online. You started seeing color and print showing up more because that photograph's better online. If that's what you still want to wear in person, that's something else. I noticed that change in the UK first, and I think it was a lot of black at the time which then slowly started to shift as people realized black is not showing the details the way designers and retailers want.

All these little inputs come together, they then end up finding their way and dovetailing into what I eventually propose.

Stephen: One thing that I'm interested in, and I've been having a lot of conversations about it, is the commercial versus creativity argument. I imagine that in your world or in your career at least there are some major commercial pressures. The automotive trade, like most, is driven by money, how do you bridge that gap in terms of still having a creative job but working in a highly commercially focused sector?

Alexis: It's all a balancing act with, I think a lot of us know the saying ‘what are the rules I need to know in order to know how to break them.’

I start with what are some of the absolute parameters, for example, literally what does the body of the vehicle look like? How well does it take certain colors? Is it more conducive to a metallic versus a solid color? Can it handle solid colors really well? You would assume that every car can, but I see a lot of Toyota Camry’s on the road here that are trying to copy Porsche colors and a Camry is not a Porsche. It makes you realize, okay, wow, that's when you understand that the surfacing and the detailing on the exterior of the body is so important to reference and to respect because not everything works like it does on higher-end, more luxury vehicles.

That said, I've even seen Rolls Royce SUVs here that try to use the same colors as I've seen on a Carerra (Porsche), and it really doesn't translate.

There are always some of these very basic constraints, then there are company constraints. When I was at Ford or Toyota there were a lot more guardrails because of profitability and selling as many units as possible, but within that you can always find opportunities. Ok, if it's not on the exterior, is something on the interior that we could try to introduce?

The company that I'm with right now, Czinger in Southern California, C-Z I-N-G-E-R, if I were to immediately start at a place like this right out of school, I think it would be very daunting because we're only doing 80 units.

The client has a lot of input, but I also have to go back to them and work with them on the best solution... For example one gentleman wants the entire vehicle in purple. I mean, that's my favorite color so I think that sounds great, however, he wants to cover all of the carbon fiber body, which is kind of heretical to our F1 engineers who've been slaving away over this design and all the aerodynamics as something to show off..

But, well… that's his request and if he's paying the $2 million starting price for that, it's then onto the interior, maybe I say, ok, we're going to dip dye this thing like an Easter egg but on the inside I'm going to give guidance. There's always constraints and at the end of the day, I'm always asking, what do these surfaces and materials want to be? There's almost like a natural essence about them that I’m looking for. For our vehicle right now, the carbon fiber, to me it dictates everything.

Stephen: I know you're not on social media and you've got quite an elusive presence, can you tell me about your backstory? how you got to where you are, what you love doing, a bit about yourself?

Alexis: Absolutely, so… growing up. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, outside Los Angeles City. Both my parents were from Los Angeles. My dad was a huge car guy for lack of a better term. A lot of people will ask, what is it about LA that fosters this car culture? Because it's become so ubiquitous, almost like the movie industry, a lot of people don't realize we have a huge garment industry here and they also don't know about the aerospace industry that was here during World War II. These aerospace engineers, during their off time and on the weekends, they were going home, working on their cars, tinkering with them, taking them to events, showing things off, meeting with their friends and then going back home and saying, okay, I'm going to keep fiddling with this.

Then obviously the weather, it created this environment for all of these old mad scientist guys to do their things and take what they've been doing in aerospace and apply it to automotive. I think that's why there's such a big aftermarket culture here too.

Anyway… So my dad, growing up in the fifties, sixties, seventies, he was absorbing all of this culture. He built a very specific engine, a blown Ardun, and would go to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to test it out. He eventually started working with Petersen Publishing, he was a writer at Petersen, the one with the museum here in LA. He was brought into Ford's PR office for their West Coast region, so when I was eight or nine he was bringing cars home all the time to evaluate. I would be sitting in the backseat going, oh my gosh, this color doesn't look right, I would change this. I just started deconstructing it then putting it back together in my head.

I knew from 10 years of age I wanted to be a designer, but I just didn't know that there was an opportunity for that in automotive because like a lot of people, you think some guy at the car dealership is picking everything. In reality they're not. There are whole groups or teams dedicated to this.

My mom had me in every art and design class she could get me in from then on in. She said she could tell that’s what I was going to be, I was always in with the crayons, the Lego or whatever I could get my hands on. Then, I just continued on that path into college and had an opportunity to intern at Ford in Michigan. At the time I was like, wow, I'm going to the ‘mothership’ in Michigan.

I went there and afterwards I didn't even feel like finishing school. I had a year left and I knew this was absolutely it. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

This was in the late nineties, I graduated, I went back and interviewed, they hired me on. I just felt like when I did the internship, it was like all of these little pop rocks went off in my mind as I realized, this way that I do things and process things, I’ve finally found this place to apply all that and make sense of it. It fits with my background and my mind, my personality and sensibility.

In terms of social media, I think LinkedIn was one of the first social media platforms that felt like, okay, you’ve got to be on this… But… I'm just an extremely private person and the thought of people constantly prying all the time. Then this constant oversharing that happens, there's no mystery about anything. That is deeply unsettling on so many levels for me.

I was on social media for a few years and the last time I was on there was in 2011. It's been incredibly freeing to not participate in it anymore. One of my favorite authors is Cal Newport. He went to Georgetown and MIT and one of his main recommendations for being more productive is to get off social media. If people haven't read his work and his books or are trying to figure out how to tap into something, he's not preachy about it, but it's hard to finish the book and not say, ‘yeah that makes a lot of sense’.

I think for younger people, I hear all the time, ‘it's too hard to quit’. I think for people's own sanity, a lot of people are far better off mentally and otherwise to just say, hey, I'm going to be my own person, do my own thing, and I don't need to broadcast 24 /7 how I'm doing it.

Stephen: That leads me on quite nicely… A typical question that I keep asking everyone is what inspires them? How do you get inspiration? Where do you look for inspiration? An obvious place for that would be social media. Where do you look?

Alexis: I have about a 45-minute drive to work and sometimes it's the perfect opportunity for my mind to empty out so the tide of ideas can roll back in. I use that time. I even have dreams about things. I'll do a lot of upfront research on something, maybe I'm not necessarily trying to edit everything out in that moment, but I'm just letting things wash over me and I try to take them in. That doesn't mean everything then gets applied to that immediate project. I might reshuffle those ideas and park them for a minute because as I said, I've got 80 cars to do, so there is always something that comes up.

The inspiration for one of our primary designs is the Blackbird, the famous fighter pilot jet that is such an incredible presence, sometimes a concept can be pretty specific. I'll do research on that and then also be thinking about are there certain things that are appropriate references. I also don't necessarily always want to be too literal.

I know a lot of people go on social media. It's not that I don't review trend websites or I don't have things to go to, but I actually grew up reading print magazines, I still actually really like print. I'm still weird enough to read a weekly newspaper. I think probably my best ideas and designs tap into something very elemental. I think if you can find that, you'll rarely propose something that feels forced because you're tapping into something innate and inherent to whatever your widget is. For me, it's cars. I've tried to work on other types of products and I just find them to be… my heart is not in it. I can't muster the interest and enthusiasm to care about a dishwasher, but there are people who can and thank God for that.

To view Alexis’ website, Le Future Classic, click here.