TALES OF THE DETAILS
At this point in our project, we have our bike frame and our big idea. A good story and a strong product can emerge from just those two things, but what really brings design to life and elevates it from good to great is the details. We want our themes to manifest at every touchpoint, to create an entire ecosystem beyond the bike. We want our rider to live and breath utility and freedom whenever they are on this bike. We decided that, to create the ultimate utility bike, it was time to really sweat the details.
MATERIALS AND COLORS
Our bike is designed to live outside. It's made to get dinged up and beaten on, so how can the materials and colors celebrate this? Utilize materials that will show their age, but not break down.
A fresh paint job looks amazing until the first time your bike tips over. Then all you can see every time you look at it is that chip above the rear wheel. Ok, if you're going to fixate on that, how do you make the chip a badge of pride instead of a blemish? One of our designers kept bringing up the idea of reveals. Make the paint reveal new aspects the longer you have it.
Wear was once a badge of honor in our society. The way your boots or your jeans were worn in (or out) revealed something about how you lived your life. To bring this idea to our paint we're experimenting with layers. Our plan is, as the top layer starts to wear off, another color is revealed, and then maybe even another. We're trying different colors and coats, but we have this vision of being able to glance at someone's bike and immediately know that they've put some miles on that thing. The bike will tell its own stories about the rider.
It starts with the paint, but we've extended this principle to as many aspects as we can, including our integrated bag. The tendency is to make it out of modern technical materials for ultimate function. The problem is that these materials don't age very well. They don't build up a nice patina, they just get ripped.
To balance the emotional with the functional we collided old and new. The bag combines traditional materials, waxed canvas in this case, with modern, high-functioning materials—a rubberized compound in key places. It's going to age gracefully as it lives in the elements, but it will also always function as it should.
ACCESSORIZE VIA INTEGRATION
Most items that you take biking are not part of your bike. Your bag is usually on your back, your lights are clipped on and your lock is dangling somewhere. We asked ourselves, which of these accessories could be integrated into the bike itself? Finding out has been a fun exercise for the irresponsible teen in all of us. We get to break things! Walk into our project room and you might think you've walked into some sort of bike accessory graveyard. Broken lights and locks are strewn about the table, torn apart in the name of bike betterment.
We started with lights. Why should lights come off easily when you only need to remove them to replace a battery? To figure out how to integrate them into the bike, light after light has been pried apart and shoved into all manner of custom fittings. We're trying to spot that point where you feel comfortable knowing that when you leave your bike locked up nobody is going to help themselves to your lights, but you also can reasonably remove
them when you need to.
Next on our list is figuring out how to improve the bike lock experience.
CURATION VS CUSTOMIZATION
One of our challenges has been to figure out where we should stop designing. Reading this far, you've probably imagined us merrily re-imaging every single piece of the bike. This actually isn't the case.
As industrial designers, we like to consider every last aspect of anything we make. For this project we had to roll back those tendencies quite a bit. We earnestly started considering parts like the crank arm and the chain ring but our partners at Signal told us, in not so many words, to save it for the talk room, son. They showed us how companies like Shimano have essentially perfected bike components. We realized that we would be wasting our time and energy trying to improve some of these things. But others, like the handlebar stem, we think we can improve. It's been good for us to really examine where we should customize versus where, instead, we should curate to find the best existing components for our bike.
The deadline for this project is approaching fast. It's going to be a race to get everything just right, but as we iron out all of the details we are starting to see this bike become more than just a bike, but an entire cohesive experience. One that we wish we could have every day when we ride. This is why we sweat the details.
