Bicycle Design

Growing up watching Tour de France with Danish film-maker and commentator Jørgen Leth on television has made  me a life-long fan of bicycling. From the history of bicycle journalism to the extreme sacrifices the riders must live through to perform at the top level, I am completely in love with the sport. This is also true when it comes to bicycle design. When my beautiful Fuji Track bike was smashed by a car a couple of weeks ago, I started looking at the 2010 bicycle designs and found this beautiful Eddy Merckx EMX-1  road bike that I completely fell for. Though I almost love everything about this bike, there is on thing that I - as a graphic designer - hate about most modern bicycle design: The amount of ugly logos and colors that destroy the beauty of the bicycle frame. I feel there's something ignorant about these designs, especially when considering the bicycle design from the past. Bicycles that people like Fausto Coppi, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Luis Ocana rode. These were simple, elegant and beautiful designed sculptures.

Just to make a simple test I removed all the logos from the beautiful EMX-1 in Photoshop, and I must say that the difference is enormous. It actually doesn't look like a bike for bowling team any more. Imagine what could be done with the color scheme to make this bike elegant. The biggest difference for me is the fact that now you actually see the beautiful, subtile logo on the front of the bike. Oh god, I would like to have my hands on one of these.

Before

After