Gerry McGovern: Jaguar's Human Caption

On November 19, 2024, Jaguar released a short teaser trailer for their upcoming rebrand, titled "Copy Nothing." The trailer showcased no vehicles or hints of automotive aesthetics. Instead, it presented a low-quality fashion film that felt like something British fashion photographer Nick Knight might have discarded back in the late '90s. In fact, comparing it to Knight’s work would be an insult, as the reality was far worse. It was like reaching for something nourishing after weeks of starvation in the Sahara Desert, only to be airdropped candy floss.

If you can imagine a car company with Jaguar’s rich history being hijacked by design interns who only reference Pinterest for inspiration, then you can probably guess the outcome. Nothing substantial was presented—just vague text conveying the same level of inauthenticity as Keir Starmer discussing his passion for making layered pasta bakes on This Morning. The comments section on YouTube and X perfectly summed up how alienated people felt by the new approach, mirroring the enthusiasm of Labour’s latest approval rating.

The only useful information provided was the line beneath the view count: “We’re here to delete ordinary. To go bold. To copy nothing.” This didn’t communicate much beyond a weak attempt at futurism, reminiscent of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s manifesto from the early 1900s.

However, I don’t want to focus solely on this reaction. What concerns me more is the growing trend of telling people what to think, rather than how to think. This shift is crucial and reveals the reproductive system of Jaguar’s thinking. We can criticize the design and aesthetic choices all we want, but the truth is, we live in a Western civilization where individual choices have become so subdivided that we might soon need cars that can adapt to our individual aesthetic preferences, rather than having a single designer push a vision of what he believes the future of a car company should look like. Not to toot my own horn, but I believe it’s easy to criticize without attempting things yourself. I drew the images below back in 2012, years after deciding not to pursue car design. The concept was a vehicle capable of adjusting its aerodynamics, which would in turn alter its body design. The first drawing shows a bird’s-eye view of the concept moving at high speed, while the second depicts three stages of the contour dynamics changing from the side.

From my perspective, I couldn’t care less about Jaguar, as they haven’t achieved anything original since the XJ220 and the S-Type from 1999. Both designs paid homage to the qualities and contours of past Jaguars, while highlighting the potential for the future. I had the chance to drive an S-Type, and I felt instantly transported to a distinctive realm—it was memorable. But as I said, it doesn’t matter what I personally think, because we live in a time where anything can be considered art, and design is often the result of committee work, or when it’s the work of one single designer, it’s meant to please a multilayered committee.

All I can say is that the new "design language" looked no different from the sketches I made as a child when imagining futuristic Volvos or Rolls-Royces.

That said, the blocked front grille on the new Jaguar Type 00 reminds me of a fan I recently purchased, which also had half of its vents blocked by design. I initially thought this was to restrict airflow, but when I consulted the manufacturer, they told me it was just part of the design—no real explanation. Similarly, the Type 00 is another example of "that’s just the design," with no real justification provided.

This led Jaguar to release their second video, attempting to educate critics about the design. And this is where Gerry McGovern, the man responsible for governing this mess, comes in.

I watched Jaguar's "Type 00 | Copy Nothing Miami" video, and the opening featured a female voice that had the eerie quality of an AI voice, as if it were an episode of Black Mirror introducing a dystopian future where humanity was imprisoned by Venetian blinds and force-fed Turkish delight. It almost feels like some kind of hypnotic mind control video, trying to convince you that if you duct tape your iPhone to your face, you'll eventually be able to live your life authentically. The disturbing pacing, combined with the overly exaggerated color grading, completely detaches you from any sense of connection to what you'd expect from a Jaguar. Even the new simplified font feels like reductionism for the sake of reductionism, rather than something thoughtful. It leaves you with a sense of emptiness, like David Brent quickly glancing over a resume and making a character judgment solely based on that.

The video continues to emphasize the design element of "strikethroughs" so much that you can almost hear the test screening audience, from thousands of miles away, saying, "We get it, we get it." When Gerry McGovern finally appears, he's dressed exactly as you'd expect his marketing team to have him dressed: sneakers and a denim jacket. Maybe that's his style, but it just feels forced, with him wedged between two examples of the Type 00, like he's in a hostage video.

McGovern slowly and desperately tries to convey what it's all about, using language you would expect from someone who spent time at Coventry University and the Royal College of Art. The lack of detailing on the cars, paired with the enormous backdrop, only reinforces the sense of alienation that the original teaser film conveyed.

The indoctrination begins when you hear McGovern repeatedly say phrases like "challenge convention," "no desire to copy the norm," "threw away the rulebook," and "don’t be held back by the past, be brave." He also tells the audience that Jaguar makes "objects of desire," but this message contradicts the very designs he's showcasing. A quick Google search of concept cars or the current trend of luxury vehicles, like BMW's focus on oversized grilles for their Chinese market, shows that nothing about these designs is new. People in these countries want to make a statement after paying hefty import taxes on foreign cars, so the last thing they want is a modestly displayed BMW badge on the bonnet. Jaguar is doing the same thing here, with a blocky grille and rear design that suggests they ran out of ideas after finishing the back of the car.

The constant references to British icons and past creatives feel like an attempt to gaslight the audience into thinking this design is somehow groundbreaking—because David Bowie dyed his hair orange. McGovern urges the audience to marvel at the "jaw-dropping proportions," but all I can think of is how the first Xbox would have looked if it had been painted pink with four fan blades attached to it.

As time goes on, it becomes clear that McGovern is there not as a designer but as a humanized artistic statement, tasked with convincing the audience that the design is iconic. Australian artist Ashley Wood once said, "If I have to put a caption next to my art, it’s failed." McGovern seems to be reconstructing that idea with his efforts to justify poor decisions that have led us to this point.

It becomes infantilizing to be told Jaguar didn’t conform when the score lines of the car have been done countless times before by brands like Lexus and others. If you simply Google "Art Deco car," you'll find designs from the 1930s that truly reflect the artistic statement McGovern is trying to promote. McGovern comes across like Kamala Harris—except instead of cramming as many words as possible into a sentence to create a "word salad," he speaks at a painfully slow, "word sloth" pace, creating the illusion of something profound while constantly droning on about how the design is a reflection of British culture. By the time he finishes his sentence, that culture would have evaporated.

Overall, I hope people can see through the nonsensical silliness of the next Jaguar design and realize they themselves have more originality in them than what McGovern is trying to sell them—the illusion that progress had been made.