In Conversation with Alexis Senter
January 2024
In this conversation, Alexis Senter offers a rare insight into the nuanced world of automotive colour and materials design — where intuition meets engineering, and every decision is shaped by both creative instinct and industrial constraint. From forecasting future trends to navigating the tension between personal expression and production realities.
SC: 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?
AS: I am a colour and materials designer, doing research and development for automotive studios.
Every automotive company has its 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. In the colour and materials space, it takes someone with an affinity and a natural acuity for being able to see not just colour, but all the undertones, all the different shades, and how everything will ultimately sit together and work together in the vehicle that you're about to experience.
SC: I know I can’t just walk into a dealership and ask for any colour. It seems like there are certain colours for certain cars. Why is that, and how do you determine how many there will be or which colour you're going to launch a car with?
AS: In the major automotive companies, which are called OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers)—the Toyotas, the BMWs, the Volkswagens of the world—the colour is dictated by production constraints in the plant. A lot of vehicles, like Porsche’s and Audi’s, share platforms. What you have to try to figure out is which vehicles are going down the same paint line. That’s the first restriction that is placed on the vehicle and what ultimately ends up on it.
Next, who is the intended market? What research do 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 colour, it takes time because of all the testing of the exterior colours. We have to put the vehicle out in a deserted part of Arizona or Florida to make sure nothing will happen with that colour. Nothing will happen with the leather, the textiles, etc. That’s why it takes so long.
SC: If you're looking to 2027, for example—three years away—how do you predict what a consumer might want in terms of colour? There must be a bit of guessing going on? I imagine colours 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?
AS: 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 of years?” The black, white, grey, silver, charcoal’s of the world. White is also a huge exterior colour 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-grey space?
I will say, while I don’t really look to fashion other than, occasionally, footwear, it 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—is that I find myself constantly observing, 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 shifted a lot of people’s embrace of colour. They became far more accepting of the green car, 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.
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 very well online. You started seeing colour and print showing up more because they photograph better online.
All these little inputs come together; they then end up finding their way and dovetailing into what I eventually propose.
SC: 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?
AS: It’s all a balancing act. 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 colours? Is it more conducive to a metallic versus a solid colour? Can it handle solid colours really well? You would assume that every car can, but I see a lot of Toyota Camrys on the road here that are trying to copy Porsche colours—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 seen Rolls-Royce SUVs here that try to use the same colours as a Carrera, 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. If it’s not on the exterior, is there something on the interior that we could try to introduce?
The company that I’m with right now—Czinger in Southern California—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 favourite colour, so I think that sounds great. However, he wants to cover all of the carbon fibre 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, then it’s onto the interior. Maybe I say, okay, we’re going to dip-dye this thing like an Easter egg, but on the inside I’m going to give guidance. There are 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 fibre, to me, dictates everything.
SC: 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?
AS: Absolutely. So… I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, outside Los Angeles. 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 realise 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, 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 thing and take what they’d been doing in aerospace and apply it to automotive. I think that’s why there’s such a big aftermarket culture here too.
My dad, growing up in the fifties, sixties, and seventies here, was absorbing all of this culture. He eventually started working as a writer for Petersen Publishing. Later, 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 back seat going, oh my gosh, this colour doesn’t look right—I would change this. I just started deconstructing it, then putting it back together in my head.
I knew from the age of 10 that 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 teams dedicated to this.
My mom had me in every art and design class she could get me into from then on. 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. When I did the internship, it was like all of these little pop rocks went off in my mind as I realised this way that I do things and process things—I’d finally found a place to apply all that and make sense of it. It fits with my background, my mind, my personality, and my sensibility.
In terms of social media, I think LinkedIn was one of the first platforms where it felt like, okay, you’ve got to be on this… but I’m just an extremely private person. The thought of people constantly prying, and this constant oversharing—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 favourite 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, it’s hard to finish and not think, “yeah, that makes a lot of sense.”
SC: That leads me on quite nicely… What inspires you? How do you get inspiration? Where do you look?
AS: 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 and just let things wash over me. I might reshuffle ideas and park them for later.
The inspiration for one of our primary designs is the Blackbird jet. I’ll research that, but I don’t want to be too literal. I still like print magazines, newspapers—things that feel more elemental. The best ideas tap into something innate.
The Goodwood 2023 concept came from a dream—“Golden State of Mind.” The car became the orange of the California poppy. It tied into California identity and the naming convention of previous colours we had like “Red My Mind” and “Blue My Mind.”
SC: What’s next?
AS: We’re launching our first production series—80 cars across two models. We’re also preparing our next show cars for Goodwood and Monterey Car Week.
Growing up, I went to Laguna Seca every year. It felt magical. My dad was honoured there after he passed. That experience, combined with my career—from production to bespoke—has all come together now at Czinger.
