It is very difficult to become an automotive designer for Ferrari; you have to spend thousands of hours drawing to master the skills needed to draw cars at a professional level. It’s a dream that can come true with skill, hard work, and patience. A talented and expert person stands behind the phenomenal car designs of the most prestigious automotive brand: a designer who extended Ferrari, Flavio Manzoni, the Italian architect and automobile designer.

Manzoni began his career in 1993, working for FIAT, Lancia, Volkswagen, and SEAT before joining Ferrari as the company’s Head of Design in 2010. Since the Italian car manufacturer was founded in 1947, he is the first head designer to have succeeded in building a successful Ferrari design team. In an interview for Design Father, he confessed: "When I was a young boy, it was certainly my dream to design cars, but I could never have imagined that the dream would become a reality. I was very lucky! But I think when I was young, I expected to see flying cars by 2000."

In his early days at Ferrari, Flavio Manzoni saw the necessity of establishing an in-house design team and creating a facility that could house all the design-related activities of the Prancing Horse. Thanks to his revolutionary thinking and his incredible team, the Centro Stile Ferrari was opened in September 2018. Tasks are now easier, the synergy between design and engineering has evolved, and design has expanded in bright new directions.

Design-wise, "Our objective was to create a ‘wow’ effect, a surprise when you walk in from the old Ferrari entrance to the Maranello site. There is great precision in its construction, and there is a strong relationship between the form of the building and our cars. The surfaces suggest Ferrari design with these concave and convex surfaces and the interplay between light and shadow." stated Manzoni.

Today, the four-story facility houses over 100 designers, including modelers and color and trim specialists. Clients seeking to buy their own new Ferrari can preview a wide range of customization options in the Tailor-Made area.

At Ferrari, every car is designed from scratch while creating practical, groundbreaking, and futuristic designs. The magic begins with a line on a blank sheet of paper at the stroke of a pencil. Through the lines traced by Flavio Manzoni’s pen, you can relive the birth and creation of these elegant cars.

In addition to sketches and computer models, Manzoni puts a lot of attention on scale models that are formed by Ferrari’s expert model makers at the Centro Stile in Maranello. Every detail is attentively analyzed and refined. "It’s not simply a process of creation; most of all, it is a long and often tiresome journey of assimilation and growth," he stated.

From dream to reality, Manzoni and his team blessed us with several iconic models like the LaFerrari, F12 TDF, FXX-K, Roma, Monza SP1/SP2, 296 GTB, 812 GTS, and Daytona SP3, just to name a few.

Ferrari and Manzoni were awarded the prestigious Compasso D’Oro Award for the F12 Berlinetta for its "flowing, dynamic forms that use innovative aerodynamic solutions in a true marriage of technology and aesthetics; the prancing horse epitomizes the perfect balance between maximum efficiency and elegant proportions typical of Ferrari’s front-engined V12 sports cars’, the most powerful Ferrari at the time." It was the most high-performance Ferrari ever built when it was introduced to the public in 2012.

Red Dot has named Flavio Manzoni and the Ferrari Design Team in Maranello as the 2019 "Red Dot: Design Team of the Year." Between 2015 and 2019, the models designed by Flavio Manzoni and the Ferrari Design Team won 14 awards in the Red Dot Award for Product Design. Ferrari is the first car manufacturer in the history of the competition to win the top distinction, the Red Dot: Best of the Best, five times in a row for the Ferrari models FXX-K, 488 GTB, J50, Portofino, and Monza SP1.

The Ferrari Design Team is the most talented group of professionals Flavio Manzoni has ever encountered, and he’s honored to be working with these boys and girls every single day. We should express gratitude from time to time for the people who work day and night to design such masterpieces. Ferrari is not a car; it’s a dream.

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Dream makers: behind the scenes at the Ferrari Design Center