THE ART OF SPEED
Automotive designer, John Krsteski.
John Krsteski has been on quite a journey. Born in Macedonia, a region formerly part of Yugoslavia, he moved to Detroit when he was a child. The largest city in Michigan has played an essential role in shaping the American automobile industry and is where John’s passion for cars developed at an early age. “There wasn’t much to do in Detroit when I grew up, but I always liked to draw,” he ponders. “I could get lost for hours sketching anything and everything, including cartoon characters and cars. I often got in trouble for drawing in class, even in grade school.”
He enjoyed witnessing Motor City’s hot bed of automotive activity up-close as an observer, participating in Friday night cruises when he was old enough to drive. Additionally, he was a regular at the famed Woodward Cruise, where thousands of vehicles parade on the event’s namesake, Woodward Avenue. Muscle cars were very much part of the social fabric, hence the young John’s liking for high-performance V8 ‘street machines’ burning rubber.
His passion for art would combine with his love of four-wheelers when formal training in design at Detroit’s well-known College for Creative Studies resulted in graduation in the discipline of Transportation Design in 1991. During his four-year tenure, and not unlike many of his classmates, John acquired a taste for aircooled Porsches, marvelling at the unique lines of the 911. His first foray into the Porsche world wasn’t with a 911, however, but with a 928 purchased a year after graduating from college. “Despite being a lover of big, naturally aspirated engines, I was less interested in the
performance aspect of my 928’s V8 and more fascinated with the simplicity of the front-engined, water-cooled Porsche’s overall design,” he concedes. “I drove that ‘land shark’ day in, day out, even in winter. I sold up before moving to California, but was pleased to have covered 160,000 miles in the car.”
John relocated close to Los Angeles in 2001, opting to run an advanced design studio for Johnson Controls, working on advanced automotive interiors “at a time when the expectation for graduates like me was to become exterior designers”. In 2007, he became Hyundai’s North American Design Manager, before taking a position in the company’s luxury division, Genesis. Now holding the title of the brand’s Chief Designer in North America, his role consists of leading a team of exterior and interior designers, competing with studios in Europe and South Korea (though they occasionally collaborate with each other). In parallel, he teaches at the respected Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, with prime focus concerning visual communication. Needless to say, Southern California has now become “a big part of my life, making it hard to imagine moving back to Detroit.” Pleasingly, his love of the Stuttgart brand remains strong, as demonstrated by the fact his daily driver is a 2005 997 Carrera S he acquired in 2006 before beating his previous Porsche record by adding 180,000 miles to the stock-spec 911’s odometer.
HAPPY MEDIUM
Another aspect of John’s career happens to be his personal artwork. Occasionally, when not labouring in his studio at home, he can be seen toiling where he teaches, poring over either acrylic-on-canvas or digital illustrations. The skills he’s honed in the workplace
allow him to make the two approaches almost indistinguishable from one other to the untrained eye. Even his brush techniques remain the same, no matter the medium he’s created with.
John’s first step when working with traditional canvas consists of marking and sketching the subject to be depicted, a process somewhat similar to his digital artwork, which might start as a doodle. For the next step in computer-assisted art, he uses a program called Painter, installed on his Macbook or tablet. It offers many advantages, including an ease of blending colours, with inspiration coming from attending numerous automobile events in North America, from the esteemed Monterey Car Week & Concours, to smaller-scale local meets.
“You can go to car shows in Socal more or less every weekend, gathering as much reference material as you care to stockpile. It’s a great stimulus,” he muses. Indeed, rather than choosing a subject far removed from his day job, his continued love of motoring sees him escape into a world of racing, with Formula One, Indycar and sports prototypes informing his passion projects. He cites the 917 as his favourite subject matter, as demonstrated by the amazing work he’s created in tribute to the Salzburgliveried motorsport machine Richard Attwood and Hans Herrmann piloted to victory at the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans, as well canvases picturing the Gulf-liveried John Wyer Kurzheck (short tail) Pedro Rodriguez, Leo Kinnunen and Brian Redman used to great effect by winning the 1970 24 Hours of Daytona.
1971’s winner at Sarthe, the Martini-decorated 917 campaigned by Gijs van Lennep and Helmut Marko, has also raced out of John’s fingertips, along with the Martini-decorated 911 Carrera RSR 2.8 and the 911 GT1-98, a then new Porsche designed to match the power and prowess of the Mercedes CLK-GTR and the Toyota GT-ONE. “You might notice how I like to paint different angles of the same car,” he smiles, enthusiastically. “It’s the designer in me. I’m never tired at
looking at a sports car, seeing beauty in its proportions, curves, angles and profile. There’s something to be enjoyed wherever you stand around a car,” he adds, citing interesting body graphics and sponsor decals as elements of a race car that only reveal themselves when you take time to view all there is to view.
John’s jump back into a Porsche came after time spent behind the wheel of a classic Ford Mustang. “It was a 1966 fastback transformed into a Shelby GT clone, one of my dream cars,” he grins, recognising you can take the boy out of Detroit, but you can’t take Detroit out of the boy! A 1978 Ferrari 308 GTS in black — an almostfinished project currently being treated to longer lasting camshaft tensioners — currently lives alongside the 3.8-litre 997, though between the day job and completing recent private commissions, he has enough to keep busy without worrying about finding time to tinker with a Targa-topped Prancing Horse. Not that he’s complaining about demand for his work. Just remember to tell him Classic Porsche sent you!