Richard Gresens: from trains, planes and …

Richard Gresens has always been fascinated with speed and movement. He spent most of his formative years in his hometown of Milwaukee hanging out at the train station during the summer helping his grandfather, who worked for Union Pacific."I just loved the streamlined look of the trains back in the 1960s, and I take a lot of inspiration from that. To me it's all about scale and motion--I have never liked static things," Gresens says. Even with his love for speed, Gresens admits automotive design didn't rank at the top of his career list when he was younger. While he found himself constantly drawing cars, planes and trains during his high school years, he never signed up for an art class. That all changed one day when a friend suggested he turn his talent into a job and look into studying design at Detroit's College for Creative Studies:"I did not sign up for the transportation program, but rather settled into product and graphic design," he says. In time, however, he did enter the transportation program and completed his studies at CCS.