The MINI, the Ferrari F430, the Maserati MC12, the Fiat 500, the McLaren P1, all one person, across four decades at the top of the industry. In this one-off episode, myself, Conor Rowe, and Conor Galligan dig into the career and design philosophy of one of the most influential automotive designers of our time. How do you redesign an icon without ruining it? What does biomimicry have to do with a hypercar? We get into all of it.

Peter Sheehan came up through traditional industrial design, the conventional route, working with the kind of processes and supply chains that most product design graduates end up in. Factories, manufacturing tolerances, the whole system. At some point in the last few years he made a deliberate turn away from that, toward something smaller and more rooted, and what's interesting is that it doesn't read as a rejection of his background so much as an extension of it. He still thinks like a designer, he's just asking different questions now.

What struck me most about Vikas' talk wasn't a specific project or piece of work, it was the shape of his career. Starting out in New Delhi, moving through design education and professional work in the United States, and eventually landing in the UK, his path is anything but linear. He's crossed industries and cultures, and his willingness to talk openly about that journey (rather than present a polished highlight reel) made it one of the more memorable talks we've had.

I've been taking photos seriously for a couple of years now. Not seriously in the sense that I've always had a plan, more that I started caring, really caring, about what I was pointing a camera at and why. I shoot everything. Street scenes, landscapes, events, quiet moments. I haven't landed on a defined style yet, and for a long time that felt like something I should be worried about. This is partly the story of why I've stopped worrying about it.

The Logitech visit came not long after London, and that probably shaped how I took it in. A few days earlier we'd been in Thomas Heatherwick's studio, looking at models and material experiments and drawings pinned to the wall. Cork was a different kind of visit, and in some ways a more interesting one.

Every design student gets told to go to London. Go to the museums, go to the galleries, look at things. It's good advice, but it doesn't quite prepare you for what it's actually like to stand in front of objects and buildings that put everything you've been learning in college into a much sharper context.

"Don't just imagine the car of the future, imagine the traffic jam."

Dunne and Raby said that, and it takes a second to register. Week 4 of Contemporary Design Culture was full of moments like it, things that sound obvious, until you actually think about them. The lecture was built around Design Futures, what it is, why designers should care, and how to actually do it. I went in expecting something abstract, and came out with a question I'm still trying to answer.

If you want to start a fight at a car meet, just mention the name Chris Bangle. As the first American to run the design department at BMW, Bangle didn't just tweak the headlights or modernise the grilles, he essentially set fire to the brand’s rulebook. During his era from 1992 to 2009, he dragged the entire automotive world into the 21st century.

In the world of product design, "retro-futurism" is often a trap. Designers frequently lean too hard into nostalgia, creating something that feels like a costume, or they go too far into the future, losing the "soul" of the original. However, Renault’s recent reveal of the 2026 Twingo is a masterclass in hitting the sweet spot.