I first heard of Bill Robinson during my high school extension classes that I took on Saturdays at CCS. Students would share stories and speak highly of Bill as an instructor, but I had yet to meet him until I enrolled and started my college studies. Bill taught our sophomore Transportation Studio class and certainly lived up to the hype that I had heard years earlier. I quickly learned why other students spoke so highly of him. Bill was a very passionate designer and loved performance cars and boats. He would keep our attention by telling great stories of his times drag racing Mopar “sleepers” on Woodward Ave or zipping around his lake in his hot rod boat causing a ruckus. More importantly, he would spend quality time in the classroom and well after classes to provide very valuable critiques of each and every student’s work. He never had a negative thing to say, but always found positive ways to motivate and guide his students to constant improvement. He provided sketch demonstrations in class and did overlay drawings on student sketches to show how to improve perspectives or rendering techniques. He was truly passionate about his students. He gave his heart, passion, and shared his skills with each and every one of us and was always available to help or answer questions.
Bill’s student body in corporate design studios is broad and deep. He has indirectly influenced countless automotive designs by the sheer quantity of students he has taught and inspired over his illustrious career. In the movie industry, they have “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”; in the Automotive Design industry I would venture it is “Two Degrees of Bill Robinson”.
At the College for Creative Studies, the students who passed through his classrooms, and OEMs around the globe are all better off because of how Bill conducted, inspired, taught and motivated others with his infectious passion for cars, art and design. He was a true saint and icon of the automotive design industry, an unsung hero to many.
Joel Piaskowski
Global Design Director, Ford Blue, Ford motor Company
About Joel: Unbeknownst to me, I began my automotive design career at a very early age when I started drawing cars that I played with. I was surrounded by and exposed to cars and art through my parents. My father, Gerry Piaskowski, was a designer at Chrysler and would take my younger brother and me to his studio occasionally on Saturdays. This translated into a very early awareness that car design was a career, and I never looked back. I enrolled in extracurricular art classes in my youth and later took high school extension classes at CCS (College for Creative Studies) prior to earning my Bachelors degree in Fine Arts / Transportation Design from CCS. I have been fortunate to work in Japan, Germany, and Australia with many business trips to South Korea. My career has spanned time at General Motors with stints at Opel, Isuzu, and Suzuki; Hyundai-Kia in Irvine, CA; Mercedes-Benz Advanced Design in Carlsbad, CA and now Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, MI; Melbourne, Australia and Cologne, Germany. Currently, I oversee design development for internal combustion vehicles (Ford Blue division) at our studios in Dearborn.