
The Tesla Design Studio remains a public mystery. Working from an airplane hangar surrounded by the sprawling SpaceX campus in Hawthorne, California, the Tesla Design Studio team of international designers, engineers and modelers helped Elon Musk’s sustainable energy company upend the entire automotive industry in just over a decade. Every single product — from its fully electric fleet to charging accessories and apparel, plus solar and battery hardware — starts here.
Tesla's Chief of Design, Franz von Holzhausen, is the first to say no single team is responsible for the company’s improbable success or its aggressive innovation. Pawel Pietryka, Creative Manager of UI Design, is far more precise: this place is like nowhere else. We talked to Pietryka about his team and how working outside your discipline has been the greatest reward in a staid industry.

Pawel Pietryka
Creative Manager/Product Designer
“I tell them to drop their dinosaur cars, to stop living in the past, to join the revolution.”