Braun created the first portable record player in 1959. So why didn't they pioneer the portable cassette player?

By the 1980s, Japanese companies like Sony had seized the portable audio market, defining what personal music devices looked and felt like. But I wanted to explore an alternate timeline: What if Braun had gotten there first? What if German engineering and design sensibility—not Japanese consumer electronics—had shaped how we carried music in our pockets? This project imagines a Braun cassette player that never was, honoring the company's iconic design language: restrained geometry, functional clarity, and timeless materiality. It's a speculative design exercise rooted in heritage and "what if."

Sketched in freeform; modeled and rendered in Shapr3D