04 July 2015

Audio components by famous Italian designers

YAMAHA Designed by Mario Bellini

Mario Bellini is an Italian architect and designer, winner of several prestigious architecture awards. His work includes a remarcable set of Olivetti machines as well as furniture for B&B and Cassina. In 1974 he was commissioned to design a cassette deck and a set of headphones for YAMAHA.

The design of the YAMAHA TC800 (TC800GL and TC800D) cassette deck is extraordinary in the sense that the complete front is angled, adapted to a more ergonomical layout. This deck is unique also because it can run on 12V (car or batteries) making it the first portable cassette deck. To complement this new cassette deck, two orthodynamic headphones were designed in 1974, the HP-1 and HP-2.






YAMAHA ergonomics

Mario Bellini and YAMAHA

YAMAHA TC-800GL and HP-1
YAMAHA HP-1 and HP-2


JVC, SONY and That's Designed by Giugiaro

Giorgetto Giugiario is an Italian automobile designer who's "folded paper" era designs from the 70's include the BMW M1, Lotus Esprit, DeLorean DMC-12 or the popular VOLKSWAGEN Golf Series 1. His more recent work include the design of the FIAT Punto, Grande Punto and Alfa-Romeo Brera. 

It is less known his activity as audio equipment designer. Some of his works include the design of the That's SOUNO audio cassette from 1988, JVC car audio from 1988 and the SONY Celebrity II compact audio range from the 90's.




That's SUONO compact cassette
That's SUONO Metal position
JVC Digifine car audio
SONY Celebrity II MD-7000
SONY Celebrity Design by GIUGIARO

QUAD and Aliante Designed by Pininfarina

Pininfarina is an independent Italian car design firm with long established customers such as Alfa-Romeo, Peugeot, Fiat, Lancia and most notably Ferrari. 

The company has been also involved in loudspeaker design such as the QUAD Moda 2000 / Aliante Moda Pininfarina, Aliante One Pininfarina or the Aliante Linea Pininfarina.

QUAD MODA 2000 Pininfarina
loudspeaker
Aliante Moda Pininfarina
Aliante One Pininfarina
Aliante Linea Pininfarina

You might think that this is the end of the story, but it isn't.