Photo: @huck93Although these days, when it comes to designing a Porsche racecar livery, it’s purely digital for Andy. No pen, no paper. And no iPad or digital pens either. He designs exclusively on his MacBook, with an external GPU for faster rendering of the designs. “I don't even have a mouse or an external monitor. Nothing,” says Andy, as he explains his particular methodology.“Right from the start I use 3D renderings,” he continues. “That’s because I immediately get a feeling on how it will work from the start and what the reflections will look like when the light connects with the car. Sometimes, if you make a design using a 2D graphic, it may look good there – but when you put it on the car, you realise that it’s totally not working. I’d go for quality over quantity. That means instead of suggesting [to a client] 10 designs, where eight designs don’t work, I prefer to focus on three or four designs using a 3D model.”Andy was handed the privilege of designing the last-ever livery for the outgoing Porsche 911 RSR works team cars at the 2022 8 Hours of BahrainVirtual vs real racecar livery designHaving started out his livery design career in the virtual racing world, these days Andy’s work is dominated by work on real racecars. For the most part Andy approaches them in the same way, he says, but there are some important distinctions between the two.“The process is a little different because when you do something for a virtual car, there are no physical limits,” says Andy. “You have way more freedom. You don’t have to think about where and how the car is stickered on a real car, for example. You will probably notice that virtual liveries look more spectacular and complicated than real life cars.”The explanation, he explains, is that these stickers add extra weight – which, understandably, isn’t good for racecars, while the shape of real racecars today are “way more complicated” than back in the 1990s, for example. “But I approach virtual livery designs as a great playground to try out design ideas,” says Andy. “I’ll create a design for a virtual team and come up with an idea that I know could translate to a real car. And they can often work much better in reality.”Andy’s design for the 8 Hours of Bahrain Porsche 911 RSR racecars incorporated the word ‘goodbye’ in all the different languages of where the car won in its 10-year works team careerAndy Werner on race helmet designWhile it’s designing Porsche racecar liveries that has brought Andy to wider attention, he is also now making a name for himself in a closely-related discipline – motorsport helmet design. More so than racecar livery designs, which are usually approved by committee, they give Andy the freedom to explore the personality and the interests of the person he’s designing the helmet for. Everybody, he says, is different. Some drivers present him with a very detailed and narrow focus of what they want, others just ask Andy to let his imagination run wild. “I always like to include small details that relate to the driver on the helmet,” says Andy about his motorsport helmet design. “For example, I’m currently working on a design for the CEO of Singer Vehicle Design. He has four children – three boys and a newborn daughter, called Lily. So, I’ve designed the shape of the boys on the back of the helmet and added a lily flower above it. It was the same kind of detail I put into a helmet for Jenson Button in 2020, after he had a son. Working in this kind of detail is what I really love to do. They may be small, but they mean a great deal to each driver.”Attention to detail. Adding personal touches. Taking inspiration from history. But always looking to the future. When it comes to motorsport livery – and helmet – design, it feels like Andy Werner is at the front of the grid.
Consumption and emission of the cars mentioned in this article911 Dakar (WLTP): Fuel consumption combined: 11,3 l/100 km; CO₂ emissions combined: 256 g/km; CO₂ class: G.
