In the early days of hip hop, break dancers would perform on flattened cardboard boxes to beating boom boxes. Fast-forward a few decades and check how German art director Bartek Elsner has combined those two old-school elements into a giant cardboard ghetto blaster to help bring attention to Mini Cooper at the International Radio Festival in Zürich.
Sadly, even with gargantuan speaker cones, Elsner says the cardboard is just "a boombox costume for the car. The sound comes from the Mini's sound system. The backside of the blaster is partly open, so that you can see the car." While audiophiles may be unimpressed, the model is striking and its giant size will certainly help expose people to his client's miniature offerings.
Elsner isn't a boom box historian and his design isn't based on any particular model, but he says, "I have a weakness for old electronics/hi-fi equipment: the design, the huge number of buttons, the wording of the functions, the typefaces. So I spent some time researching and in the end it's a mesh-up of the blasters I liked most."
Designing in cardboard is nothing new for Elsner (Wired Design has covered his work in the past) and the form itself wasn't difficult to construct. Tight timelines and shipping were the bigger challenges. Elsner says "the challenge about the project was to make it transportable and 're-buildable.'" One would think that shipping something made of cardboard boxes would be a breeze, but it actually requires some clever cardboard construction. The project came together quickly, he says, "From the client's 'go!' to the beginning of the festival, it was a bit more than 2 weeks. The last days were the hard ones."
It was built in Berlin and shipped to Zürich where it was assembled and placed in conspicuous public places like opera houses, castles, and other places where b-boys and breakers aren't usually known to congregate.
There are no concrete plans for what will happen to the boom box after the festival, but wouldn't it make an amazing holiday party decoration?
Photos courtesy of Draft FCB Zurich & Bartek Elsner
