The Porsche Museum in Zuffenhausen, Germany is nothing short of mind blowing. The ultra-clean, super-minimal building houses over 80 exhibits chronicling the auto-maker’s rise to prominence. The whole thing leans pretty futuristic, would have liked to have seen a few classic cues here and there, but I’m certainly not complaining. Has anyone been yet? Looks like a must-see if you’re anywhere near Stuttgart.
Pelican Parts has a fairly sizable collection of Porsche Racing posters and have kindly posted high-res scans on their site. There are several eras represented, each with their own distinct style. Really shows off how classic the Porsche logo is, it seems to work pretty much anywhere you put it. Note the various 917’s in there.
I remember seeing some similar posters up on Grain Edit a while back with a link to VP Racing where you could buy some. I always meant to pick one up, but I just checked back and pretty much all the ones I wanted are gone. Someone really needs to reprint these.
There’s an article over at the Porsche site about Eric Strenger, who designed a lot of the Porsche racing posters during these periods. Looking through his work it’s amazing how much range he had as an artist. I would never have guessed some of these were by the same person.
Source Pelican Collection via a time to get
Clutch’d has a gallery of beautiful Porsche 917 photos up. The legendary racer celebrated it’s 40th anniversary last year. Such an amazing design, and always love the vintage racing graphics.
It’s funny how a lot of those things that you thought were boring when growing up, are now actually really fun things to do. I never would have thought I’d spend a sunny Seattle Saturday sifting through tubs and tubs of posters and ads. But its a damn good thing I did because I found these vintage Porsche ads. I was tempted to purchase all of them but instead I wrote down some info and looked them up online. All of these ads I found on eBay and were from the 1980’s. A few of them might be late 70’s, but it’s tough to tell.
The thing I really like about these ads is that they feel authentic. That’s not to say that ads nowadays aren’t authentic but there is certainly more than enough CGI being done to them. It also seems like it’s rare to see such nice large type of this treatment in ads anymore.
Sander from the comments informed us that Helmet Krone was the designer behind these ads—more info here.
So I’m looking at my external hard drive this morning and i’m thinking man! i’m glad I don’t own one of the ones that look like Dell designed it or one that is all clunky looking or looks like its Mountain Dew sponsored and has a weird glowing green light (my apologizes if yours has a green light). Also, I wonder if I should be looking into a new external hard drive? i’ve heard mix reviews on these Porsche LaCie drives and I have 2 and i’m looking to get one main one that’s really reliable, any suggestions? Now back to daydreaming about the Porsche Tapiro, also did anyone pick one of these up yet or did we agree that is was too expensive?
I posted a while back about the Porsche-designed Etón P’9120 clock radio but today we’ve got the 9120’s more utilitarian little brother, the P’9110. This hand-cranked emergency radio sports the usual fare: flashlight, siren, etc. but that’s where the similarities between this and that plastic Coleman you got at Target end. Once again Porsche has succeeded with a classic, functional design; clad in cast aluminum, the 9’9110 sports clean lines and color scheme to match. I am loving the tuning gear design, and the tuning wheel/chart design is wonderful.
Once again though, I could do without the cheap looking and poorly placed Etón logo. The top image is from the Porsche Design site who have wisely left out the logo in their press shots, so much cleaner. They have a shot of the 9120 sans-Etón logo up there as well which makes me wonder if you can buy these direct from Porsche instead of going through Etón and getting stuck with the extra branding? At $200 it’s more than a stretch for functionality that can easily be had for under $50, but can you really put a price on maintaining your design standards even during a disaster scenario?
Etón’s Porsche-designed P’9120 clock radio is a must for any self respecting minimalist / design aficionado with a schedule to keep. I’m loving the knob / speaker combo, so efficient and a great interaction metaphor to boot. This thing could sit comfortably beside some the the jewels of Braun modernism and Porsche even kept it old school with the remote. My only gripe with the design is the sore thumb Etón logo that breaks up the clean lines of the face. It feels misplaced and cheapens the aesthetics; it also clashes badly with the wonderful typography of the Porsche Design logo. I guess that’s what Sharpies are for though. Now if DWR would just make a matching Herman Miller walnut pedestal I’d be set. Unfortunately, at $600 it’s prohibitively expensive; but then again, dedicated design geeks wouldn’t let half a grand stand between them and waking up to such a specimen of functional art.
Via Dvice
