Jaguar’s Axel Goulée on the car that made people question whether it was real: ‘If it’s polarising, it creates debate’

The moment Axel Goulée knew his work could make people feel something came at the reveal of Jaguar‘s Type 00 concept car. Goulée had been part of the team behind the decision to finish it in a striking French Ultramarine – a shade pushed to the limits of what alternative paint technology could carry.

“It looks a little bit surreal,” he says. “It creates dimension on the car, and people online or people who see it in real life were like, I can’t actually believe it’s real, even though it’s here.”

Goulée is one of three visionaries taking part in season two of The Creators, a film series produced in partnership with Jaguar alongside glass artist Emma Goring and multidisciplinary artist Annabel MacIver, exploring what it means to approach your practice with originality.

As lead materiality designer at Jaguar, Goulée is responsible for everything you touch, feel and see inside a vehicle. It’s a role that sits closer to fine art than most people assume.

“The haptic and the real feeling of a material within the vehicle is so important,” he says, “because at the end of the day, we are physical people and we experience things with our senses.”

The travertine stone interior of the Type 00 is one example of how far that thinking can go. Stone isn’t a material that belongs in a car – until someone decides to put it there, that is. “We took that challenge as designers to take the travertine stone and put it into the concept car, into Type 00. From that unexpected association, we created something unexpected and creative.”

His measure of whether a design is working is whether it sparks conversation. “To describe a design that would be successful for me, I would say polarising. If it’s comfortable, it doesn’t work for me. If it’s polarising, it then creates debate.”

Copying, he argues, is always the easier option – you take something you like and reproduce it. Originality requires a different move: looking at a reference from an unexpected angle, or combining it with something entirely foreign to it, until it becomes something else.

Authenticity is what keeps that process honest. “I can’t lie to myself when I do something. I need to fill it with passion. Everything we do as creators and as designers needs to come from the heart. It needs to be so authentic that people can feel it when they experience it.”

Outside Jaguar, he sketches fashion – figures he dresses and develops on paper, taking an idea from imagination into something real. Creativity, he says, has been central to his life since he was a young child, when he first discovered he could represent his imagination through drawing.

“The reveal of Type 00 was one of the most proud moments of my life. When I was a kid, I always wanted to be part of these teams that create cars, and to be part of these teams today and be a huge player and a designer that takes the decision on these products is a huge achievement personally.”

All three films in the The Creators series will be made available on Attitude’s YouTube channel across April.