Instant Icons: Design Run A-Meh

In yesterday's post, I said with regard to "concept bikes" that "I'm not sure why designers feel as though they must constantly molest the cycling world with their idiotic and useless bike designs, since there are few machines in this world which require less improvement." Well, I'm now beginning to understand. A reader recently forwarded me a video about "industrial designers" and "urban mobility," and it explains a great deal about why designers are constantly reinventing bicycles as giant kitchen appliances.

As the video opens, the narrator explains that "As the concept of urban mobility gains momentum, bike manufacturers are harnessing the world's best industrial designers to reinvent locomotion on two wheels." We then see a woman in sweatpants walking a mountain bike, which serves to underscore this point:


The narrator then goes on to explain how "bike culture has evolved into a philosophical lifestyle where style and substance have converged," after which we see one of those color-coordinated fixed-gears that will soon come to symbolize the dubious fashions of "the Aughts" in the same way that acid wash came to symbolize the 1980s or leprous bubos came to represent the Middle Ages:

(When style and substance collide, substance vaporizes and dissapears on impact.)

We are then introduced to Jamie Anley, the creative director of something called JAM, which a popular search engine reveals is "a creativity and ideas consultancy for brands" that specializes in "the art of branding." Just as you can determine people's military rank by the bars on their shoulders, you can tell how important design people are by how many buttons they leave open or by how much chest they're showing:

According to Anley, "Designers in the creative community find inspiration in different industries and surprising places and they love to discover using their own transfer and their own imagination"--or, as a person with less chest showing might put it, they're rip-off artists.

In fact, Anley is such an accomplished "branding artist" that he actually manages to rebrand the act of ripping stuff off as "creative promiscuity." "Creative promiscuity," he explains, "is innate in all of us and only recently have people gone, 'It's OK to make a really beautiful bike.'"

This stunned me. Awhile back, I received a book called "The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles," which contained photographs of "beautiful" bicycles, some of which were really old. Apparently, though, all of those photos were fakes, since as Anley says the idea of making an attractive bike is an entirely new concept. By the way, if you're wondering what makes a bike "beautiful," it's colors--lots and lots of pretty colors:

(Color did not exist in cycling until 2007.)

Next, we meet the people at a company called Biomega, who the narrator assures us coined the phrase, "Furniture as locomotion"--which I've never, ever heard before, and which makes as much sense as the phrase, "Refrigeration as heating." Here they are assembling a bike:


Here's the founder, whose highly-buttoned shirt calls into question his credibility as a designer:


Skibsted believes that bicycles "need to be expressions of who we are. In order to counter the design instruments of the car they need to be very iconic." It seems to me that it takes a long time for something to become iconic, and when you set out to create an icon you wind up with something that's less iconic than it is contrived. Zippos are iconic, but I'd guess that the company founder (I believe his name was Aristotle Zippopotamus) probably just wanted to make a lighter that worked well. I also suspect that if you really want to create an icon you're better off just building something durable and relatively inexpensive. Also, your bike doesn't need to be "iconic" to be an "expression of who you are." Take my bike, for example. The scratches say I lock it to poles a lot, and the mozzarella and crusty sauce on the top tube says I love pizza. What more do you need to know?

Then again, some people aspire to be more than just careless pizza-scarfers. They want to be "elegant." Says Skibsted, "If it's not elegant then it shouldn't exist." I wonder if Skibsted would refuse a life-saving injection on the grounds that the needle was insufficiently elegant, or the doctor was poorly dressed. I also wonder if when he says "elegant" he really means "blocky."

(According to Skibsted's own rule, this stem should not exist.)

From Europe, the video then moves on to Asia, where we meet Michael Young of Giant, the designer behind "the iconic Cityspeed." A shot of Young's sketches reveals just how seriously he approached the project and how exacting his requirements were--not only do they call for a "beautiful fitting" and a "comfy-yet-cool seat (saddle)," but they also specify that the seatpost should be "steal-proof" and the handlebars "various:"

If Young's sketches don't convince you he knows how to design a bicycle, then surely his plunging neckline will:


"They wanted me to exploit the facilities in the factory," explains Young, "So things like this crossbar, although a lot of bike fanatics might go, 'Ooh, that looks a bit intimidating,' is actually not in the slightest:"


I admit I'm a "bike fanatic," and I also admit the "crossbar" does intimidate me somewhat, but only because it's pointed on the top and it looks like it could really hurt my "pants yabbies." Also, the groove looks like it would collect pizza sauce, though that could be good for dipping mozzarella sticks. But while Young insists the oddly-shaped "crossbar" does not intimidate, he fails do point out what it does do or why it's shaped that way. I guess it's just iconic, like the fork:

"It's extremely complex to do these things," Young says. Why?

I much prefer the Niner guy. Their fork also has a profile like that, but he didn't finger it gently and talk vaguely about how "complex" it is. He just said it was awesome, and then he beat the crap out of it with a hammer:



But Young isn't worried about hammers. His designs are shaped the way they are for a different reason. "By investing in these sort of qualities you protect the bike from imitation." In other words, you're paying more for a bicycle that is needlessly complicated so that some other "creatively promiscuous" designer doesn't copy it.

So in the end it seems the reason we're subjected to so many ridiculous bikes is that everybody's hoping they'll be the one to design an actual icon. But it takes an icon to make an icon, and if you want to ride an icon you'd be much better off straddling a Cipollini:

Mario Cipollini is the kind of cycling icon you can really get behind:


Unless he gets behind you first.