Luc Donckerwolke: Brand Design Brand

Mr. Donckerwolke, how would you describe your role at Genesis as Chief Creative Officer and Chief Brand Officer? 

I’m a designer by nature, but I always say that design is brand and brand is design. This idea is also reflected in my role, in which I am responsible for both the design and for all creative input for the brand as head of the entire brand and not just the products. 

And what do you see as your most important task?

To inject adrenaline into the brand, to make the brand more emotional. We have some outstanding products with a very high standard of luxury in terms of material appearance and a very serene interior environment. We call this the “beauty of white space” as we celebrate the beauty of tranquility that the space radiates. But this also requires the brand to have some kind of allure, a provocative, emotional facet. To truly appreciate peace and quiet, you need contrast, tension. That was the challenge for me: How can we create tension? The answer came with the “magma” theme. This began with the GV80 Coupe Concept that we presented in New York in 2023 in a special orange we called “magma”. It was just a test, but the response was incredible. The result was the Magma performance line, which now stands for the particularly powerful variants of our models.

And how did you come up with the term “magma”?

There’s a great story behind that. I spent about a year looking for a name – before suddenly realizing that we had had the name right in front of us the whole time. Magma is more than just the name of a color. It describes the tension we are looking for, the eruptive element that bubbles beneath the calm surface and can burst forth at any time. This also fits well with South Korea, our brand’s country of origin. Everything appears calm, controlled, confident, but behind this you can sense a tremendous sense of dynamism. This is what “magma” conveys: emotion and power kept under control. 

The development was dynamic as well: just over one year after the concept, Genesis presented the GV60 Magma. 

That shows you how quickly Genesis can react. We identified an unmet need just over a year ago, and now we’ve presented the answer and are already building a small series for the Middle East. The vehicle will be launched on the market next year. We are also working on scaling it up, that much I can tell you already. 

What is Genesis currently working on besides the Magma line? 

Our brand is now nine years old. In these nine years, we have put nine models on the road, plus several derivatives. Now we are embarking on the second generation, something we are working on very intensively. We have a lot of projects, and we need several design studios to integrate the brand and the design. We will be opening a new studio in El Segundo, California, this coming January, we are represented right here in Germany in Offenbach, and of course we’ve got Korea. The Middle East is also very important to us as a large and very inspiring market for design, which I think we can enrich even further. What’s more, the fine understanding of hospitality that characterizes our brand thanks to our Korean origins is very similar to that in the Middle East. 

How important for the design is it to have a local market presence? 

Genesis doesn’t launch a finished product on the market. We involve the countries in which we operate and draw inspiration from them. We want to be a part of the local culture. This makes it important for us to have a local presence. 

Was that the plan when you started nine years ago? 

To be honest, no. [laughs] (...)

→ Read the entire interview in ramp #65.