'I was a Milton Keynes College student, now I have a top job with Red Bull in Formula 1'

Greg Auchterlonie from Bletchley applied for a job at Red Bull initially “for a bit of a laugh” and some practice at interviews.

Today he is Head of Brand Design at Red Bull Racing & Red Bull Technology as well for as the Visa Cash App Racing Bulls team and Red Bull Ford Powertrains, the company’s Formula 1 power unit manufacturer.

Apart from creating the look for each part of the Red Bull motorsports empire, he’s also in charge of coordinating all the images of the various brands to ensure they align with each other.

“There are a lot of different things to juggle beyond the cars and the team,” he said. “There are the trucks, clothing, online portals - any graphics you see on anything digitally, anything you see across social media. It’s a plethora of different touch points across the globe.”

When Greg started in the job he was working on his own, but now he has a team of thirteen top designers as exposure of the sport has exploded in print, online and through streaming services like the Netflix documentary series, Drive to Survive.

It’s all a far cry from his beginnings in Bletchley, when he decided he didn’t want to stay on at school and do A-Levels like many of his friends.

“My dad was a motoring journalist so I’ve always been quite ingrained in motorsports and automotive. All I ever wanted to do was draw. Design is the only thing I’ve ever been good at.”

Greg says it was his time at Milton Keynes College Group’s Bletchley Campus that gave him the start he needed. “I was never going to be a lawyer or a doctor or anything like that. I always knew that I wanted to be an artist. Some of my friends stayed on at sixth form to do A Levels but I signed up for graphic design and college gave me that avenue to explore.

"The tutor was brilliant, and I’m still in touch with two of my best friends from those days, both of whom have made careers in graphic design too, and the main pillar of where we learned all our stuff was at college in Bletchley.”

“College was quite a drastic change from school and helped me become an adult quickly, which was what I needed. There wasn’t someone standing over my shoulder all the time telling me what to draw and I feel like I was allowed to become my own person.”

After college, Greg went to university and his first job was designing footballs. “And let me tell you, nobody teaches you how to design to the geometry of a football.”

He worked in a number of agencies before ending up at Caterham F1, after applying for a job he thought he had no chance of getting.

“They told me afterwards they’d been impressed by how laid back I was, which was hilarious really because I was only so relaxed because I thought I had no chance!”

Now he couldn’t be happier in his work. “To be where I am now is a dream come true,” he said.