The author, Prof. Dr. Othmar Wickenheiser, is responsible for the Transportation Design department at the University of Applied Sciences in Munich. For 25 years he has successfully placed about 95% of his graduates in the automotive industry.
This book shows how young talents are qualified in transportation design. The task was, on the one hand, to document a study that looks 60 years into the future and, on the other, to depict the development of the design of the Porsche 911 60 years ago, which is the basis for deriving the future design.
The basic idea was not to let the three-dimensional design content appear flat between the book covers. Rather, its true volume should be immediately recognizable from the outside in the three-dimensional statement of the book. In order to build a bridge over the large content-related period of 120 years, the “PORSCHE” typeface is a constant and timeless component with a high level of recognizability, which has been a constant typographic element at the product for 60 years.
The reduction of the book cover to pure typography based on this font and the (typographic) use of the cut edges to emphasize the book as a three-dimensional object resulted in a timeless and monolithic statement analogous to the subject matter, the Porsche 911 as a design icon. This graphic reduction and timelessness is reflected in the book.
In addition to the protagonists shown in the book, the target group is students, designers, sports car fans and collectors of automotive literature.