German Car Zone

This morning I came to school and what does it say on the electronic schedule? We're getting a guest speaker today, Gert Hildebrand, the chief designer of BMWs MINI brand. Holy crap!

Unfortunately the place was loaded by the time I arrived upstairs (I always arrive around five minutes before 9:00 AM, when school starts) and had to sit in the back. I was lucky to even find a seat. Then I only had my 18-55mm lens with me but that didn't matter since the place was so dark that I had to use a high ISO setting and large aperture to begin with so the pictures were never going to be great.

Anyway, he had an interesting speech prepared where he talked about the design and corporate identity of the MINI and how it all began, how it currently is and what the future will be like. It was a very interesting speech and provided a lot of insight into the automotive business from a design point of view.

Then he showed us some interesting MINI concepts and designs (created by design students and his own design team), calenders and advertisements with MINIs in them. It blew me away what those folks created. He also mentioned that how us aspiring graphic designers will most likely sometime in the future be working with an automotive company to create cool advertisements.

Here are some of the pictures I snapped. Nothing great but at least you can see him! Towards the end I wanted to walk up to him and ask for a picture with him but as you can see everyone swarmed to get up to him and I had to meet up with a group for a project presentation next class so nothing came of it sadly. Anyway, it was cool speech and I loved how he emphasized the heritage and history behind the MINI brand and car.

Awesome chris

You should have thrown a book at him for designing the clubman

Well, i'd dye to be there!

I'm so jealous

its really insane(in a positive way) what they have done to the mini brand. i'm also really jealous that you could meet the man behind the r56.

Haha

But he actually backed up that design with stories from the past. You must see some of those old MINI Coopers that are a bit extended and look almost like a station wagon, right? That's what the Clubman was based on according to him. And because their market research obviously indicated that some MINI customers wanted to use their MINI in a "bigger role" and that meant it needed more space.

The Clubman might be ugly, but it probably is more practical than your standard MINI.

^ yeah the Mini Van, It's only more practical because of the door, but its designed or children IT'S TINY Al 6ft 3 of me had to squeeze into the back of one

Incredibly ugly, yet incredibly practical.

I find the Mini van quite cool

Wonder is Gert Hildebrande will make a van version for builders?

No idea about that but he showed us drawings and official pictures of that MINI 4 x 4 they were considering to produce. Now that is the only MINI which looks cool IMO.