Posts tagged “design”  

The owner reported that it wasn’t overly uncomfortable. Also see this one.

Uploaded by harry harris | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.

Check this out: on a tip from Zannestar, Turn Signal Jackets.

With a full tutorial on Flickr. The jackets are made by Shih Chien University fashion students with the direction of Leah Buechley and use the LilyPad, a sewable set of electronic components.

Hooray for interactive, innovative fashion. Just think about what you could do with this tech. Sewn into panniers, for example.

Uploaded by leahbuechley.

Almost a decade ago Frank Kirk, an aeronautical engineer, had the bright idea that a magnesium bicycle frame could be made lighter and stronger than conventional aluminium or steel tube frames. He found he could make a magnesium frame only two-thirds the weight of an aluminium frame and one-fifth that of a frame made of steel — the Independent UK

and we spotted a Kirk this weekend. The initial response was, “whoa” and a nod to how this must’ve been the shit back in 1988. While Kirk didn’t own the 80s with this awesome, die-cast magnesium wonder of CAD, for a weekend or a month, somewhere on a group ride, this bike got talked about. Sort of like Trek’s Y-Foil bike or Softride’s “dinosaur-tongue” beam bike.

It’s expected that Apple will reboot the publishing industry today with the release of a tablet computer. It’s likely a better Kindle in form and function that also runs web applications. Expect a one more thing announcement regarding software and I suspect that’ll include proxmity (geocoded photos and videos). More on that below.

The context to the unrelenting hype about a tablet (Mac fans have wanted another one since the Newton) is the Apple Store and buying and/or subscribing to magazines, blogs, and papers. Where this potentially matters to those of us with bikes is more mobility and I hope another generation of related apps. Whether in your jersey pocket or mounted on your bike, the iPhone is more ubiquitous than ever in our sport and rides.

While I doubt it’s usefulness as a bike computer, I do see the iPhone as a dashboard. For those of us that are connected online — arguably overconnected — we can ride and check in with the office and riding buddies. We’ve been discussing “urban mobility” for years at Intel events, SXSW, Webvisions, and our Mobile Socials. There’s a mobile connectivity thread in our community that’s also driven by the fact us bike geeks are also gadget geeks. In the next month, we’ll have the Reecharge on test to charge our iPhone while we’re riding around. Presumably we could pull a tablet out of messenger bag too and plug it in to the Reecharge battery at a coffee shop while we read a tablet version of Road Bike Action.

The iPod lead to the iPhone and then to follow-on touch-screen devices from Google. We hope the innovation from Apple leads to related innovation from bike computers and related fitness apps. What we’re thinking is we’re out on a ride with a small dongle capturing data. Finish the ride, sync to a tablet or phone, and upload the data to a mashed up Latitude-type community. Want to compare your old-fat-guy time on the climb to your skinny-climbing bro? Click a button to overlay your friend’s ride. For bloggers, we could cross-reference that ride to all photos and videos we shot.

After 10:00 AM PDT today, we’ll know more.

How about you readers? Do you want a tablet from Apple or content with being retro in Tweed?

The art gallery at Design Commission was the backdrop for our talk about design earlier this week

with a collection of works by Jared K. Nickerson on the walls …

Working on the preso for Refresh Seattle tonight, citing the work of Naz Hamid, and found this cyclist in his photos.

Land and sea, or not, that bike just looks cool with it’s big, bulbous shapes. Likely those cycling in rain-drenched LA could use this for flooded intersections.

Uploaded by Nationaal Archief | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.

Speaking tomorrow night at Refresh Seattle with Kevin Tamura from Blue Flavor:

Design the Ordinary like this Fixie — This presentation is a study in the simplest of objects, their usefulness, and how they become part of our culture. It relates to web design and our tendency to overcomplicate, to play drum solos when a tight and crisp backbeat will do. Learn how to find inspiration in the ordinary and pause before adding that flair to your next project.

Clearly not wanting to be left out in the “ugly kit” department, the 2010 Footon-Servetto-Fuji team has really put the “ugh” in “ugly.” Unless this gear was designed with desert camouflage in mind, there’s really no reason why beige should be the dominant color here. (According to the press release on Cyclingnews this is “gold” not beige, but I’m not thinking that translates too well in photos.

If that weren’t bad enough, I think the large foot imprint’s going to be the start of a lot of “we stomped all over them” jokes. Finally, while one leg is black the crotch-region is beige. That’s…just…a…bad…idea.

The presentation ceremony of these jerseys was unique as well “Vuelta a España’s emcee Juan Mari Guajardo’s began the ceremony with a short film depicting a fictional chase scene in which burglars try to steal a valuable package, but are out-paced by world Rally Champion runner-up Dani Sordo’s skilled driving. The film ended with the truck pulling up to the hotel, and then fiction became ‘reality’ as the riders in black capes go to the truck to rescue the goods - the team’s Fuji SST 1.0 racing bikes.

Removing their black capes, the riders revealed the team’s new kit, designed by Dario Urzay, in gold with black logos.”

Oy.

Come on professional cycling teams, step up to the plate and design some good looking kit. You’re starting to make Nascar apparel look like evening formal wear.

Following up on our visit earlier this year to Trek during TrekWorld, Mike Pfaltzgraff will take your questions starting tonight and tomorrow. Mike is the man at Trek, designing all the graphics for the Team Bikes, Lance’s specialty bikes, the Team Shack bike, and more.

Pretty much, if you’ve seen something cool from Trek Bikes in the past 3 years, it involved Mike’s artwork. Like this Madone.

From Twitter:

Heard others wonder if Rapha actually sold anything or if it was a sophisticated social marketing campaign not unlike Andre has a Posse

or Obey Giant …

The Copenhagen Wheel is in the news today with a report from the NYTimes, website, and a teaser video:

It’s a kinetic energy wheel that “captures the energy dissipated while cycling and braking and save it for when you need a bit of a boost.”

Photo: Copenhagen Wheel

The NYTimes article includes quotes from Steve Hed, whose skeptical of bikes with regenerative wheels

“Just the basic bike is so hard to beat … The latest thing now are the simple, fixed-gear bikes, so simple and light you can throw them over your shoulder.”

A power assist product that’s simple and light is something the urban bike category needs, and if it ships, that’s more great news from Copenhagen. What this means, is MIT has developed a bike that you ride around, it stores energy, and gives you a little boost when you need it to get up a hill or around town. The unit is controlled by your phone.

Also see the Cannondale Dutchess and our electric tag.

For some reason the past month I’ve been dealing with wheels a lot. I’ve been building a lot of custom wheels and repairing a lot of wheel systems. It’s made what I like and dislike very clear in my mind. Shimano isn’t the only wheelmaker to use this “innovation”: placing the nipples at the hub rather than the rim. Shimano is the most poplar one out there, though. The usual excuse for this is that removing the nipples from the rim reduces rotational inertia of the wheel. What it really does is make truing the wheel a bitch. It’s difficult to get the wrench (which is usually proprietary) into the nest of spokes, and then the arc of the wrenching motion is limited by the same cluster of spokes. And for non-radial lacing, the actual truing of the wheel seems unnatural because the problem area of the rim is offset from the nipple that would have an effect.

Nicely produced, very informative video about the recent Oregon Manifest design challenge and ride. 30+ hand made bikes, submitted for judging on design then ridden 77 miles on and off road. Some great bikes in the lot…

Design Real is a gallery show at the Serpentine in London that celebrates useful objects. It’s curated by Konstantin Grcic and designed in collaboration with Alex Rich and Jürg Lehni.

The relevance a product has to our life lies not only in its use, but also in how far we identify with it. A good product becomes part of our culture.

Included in the show is the bicycle saddle with a review of the history, types, anatomy, and more. Interesting that Design Real just didn’t grab items from the shelf and turn them into a “show,” but studies how useful they are and why.

The curators include the toy LIKEaBIKE Racer as well. The Independent reviews the show giving it 4 of 5 stars.

Just posted video of the Cannondale Duchess in our Community and stopped short of dismissing this prototype as yet another design-school cad drawing that’ll never get made despite all the blog posts.

Bicycle Design posted at length on the Dutchess and you can find more in the links after the jump.

In this version of “The Odyssey,” Hermes, the messenger god of Greek mythology, gets around not on winged sandals but rather on a Schwinn.

The Sirens could’ve sang from Cross bikes adorned in Lycra and covered with mud, but the Topeka West High School’s production kept them in togas.

Photo: Bill Blankenship

Earlier this year, an LA production of Die Walkure, had “Valkyries ride their steeds of sculpted wire, with bicycle-wheel tails.”

Designing with Web Standards 3rd Edition arrived while cooking dinner last night at Hugga HQ. Much of what we do at Bike Hugger and for our clients at Textura Design is done with web standards. It’s not something I talk about everyday anymore — used to when I was a member of the Web Standards Project and lecturing about blogging in the early days. Have you been to a website or blog lately that looked like crap in one browser and not in another? Unlikely and all that standardized code is being read just fine by iPhones, Google phones, and the next whatever mobile device.

The arrival of the book reminded me about the importance of web standards, how far we come, HTML5, fonts on the web, mobility, accessibly, and so on. Back in the day it was a fight for standards and a good one. I’m sure our readers wish the bike industry had better standards …

I’ll start reading the book after dinner and post about it. My team has read, cited, and referred to the 1st and 2nd editions. More importanly, I’ve had the pleasure of knowing and working with the authors: Jeffrey Zeldman and Ethan Marcotte.

Earlier this year we had a Mobile Social while An Event Apart was in town.

This Museeuw Flax bike is an orphaned demo bike that Road Bike Action didn’t want anymore and offered to us to test ride. We said "hell yeah" and converted it into a fixed/free with an Eccentric Eno hub.

Why not equipped with SRAM Red and destined for the cobbles? It’ll do that too in the Spring. For the Fall, like other cyclists, we want a fixed/free bike for just riding and spinning the legs. We’ve also been wanting to ride carbon fixed since seeing the District Carbon at Trek World (and before that in Lance’s twitter stream). So we converted a flax/carbon road bike and you can do it too for a few hundred dollars.

Images from Matt W. Moore’s Momentum Exhibit at the Chorus Gallery.

Matt showed 5 recent series of his artwork: Watercolor Paintings, Cut Paper Collages, Printed Textiles, Vectorfunk Posters, and 5 Hand-Painted Bike Frames.

Those are Traitor Cycles frames.