MINI 50 Years. Past, Present and Future

MINI 50 YEARS. PAST PRESENT FUTURE: WHAT A BIRTHDAY 2009.

(Be sure to check out the 2009 MINI Design Calendar in PDF format below. This is a MotoringFile exclusive download from our friends at MINI Design.)

Stonehenge, the Sky Disk of Nebra and the Aztec Pyramides were primeval calendars, designed to measure the passage of days, seasons and the position of the sun. The human endeavour to keep track of time by dividing years into months, weeks and days is thousands of years old. These constructions were designed to re-assess the past but also to make a prediction of the future. This year, on 26 August, 2009, MINI celebrates its fiftieth birthday – not very old, in relation to the history of time measurement.

While this appears to be the right moment for reflection and for harking back to the history of the MINI, it is also a good time to look ahead and first and foremost, it is a good time to celebrate all that has been achieved. How better to do this than with a calendar, which links the past, the present and the future?

Members of the MINI design team have taken special care to depict and blend scenes of yesterday, today and tomorrow in all their retrospective, realistic and visionary aspects. Whenever designers attempt to envision the future in their contemporary setting, they also need to have an insight into the past. Therefore, the calendar’s contents are symbolic of the day-to-day approach that designers take to the MINI legend and iconoclastic issues that surround it. These issues must be addressed so as to be able to design future models for MINI customers that achieve a successful interpretation of established stylistic elements in a modern setting.

The classic segments of car design are comprised of Exterior Design, Interior Design, Color and Material Design as well as Graphic Design. These are reflected in twelve calendar sheets and their supplements. Each sheet depicts an artistic stroke produced by an individual personality from the MINI team of designers.

The different messages and the personal style conveyed by the various sheets are symbolic of the diversity and individuality of the products of the MINI brand.

On 26 August, 1959 Sir Alec Issigonis, who would have been 100 years old in 2006, was present as the very first rolled off the production line at the Longbridge facility. Today, up to 1,000 new MINIs are manufactured at the Oxford facility every day. Nobody knows what MINI models will look like in 2059, so we can only speculate – the results of these speculations, visions and ideas are also shown in the calendar.

Enter the MINI time machine. Your MINI design team.

MINI Calendar 2009. Format 580 x 535 mm (PDF Download - 5mb)