Odd Finds of Custom Designs

While backing up my old G4 I found this file within a file and laughed my sweet bottom off. Here we have a design where the company I worked for wanted a series of bikes to pitch to the IBM's. I got to pretty much do everything on these, from design, paint and decal production. The designs were kept simple as we had only two days to do all three samples. One Rigid, one Hardtail and one Full Suspension. for some reason we had these Troy Lee orange Fenders laying about and they wanted to work them into the design, which led to the General Lee like design.

Red, Blue, no wait, Red...

What is your favourite colour? In an earlier post i declared the colour code issues with China and Canada, or at least my specs sheets. Well here is a direct example of what i meant, in all the glory of my old 1.6 mega pixel Kodak Camera:) Sadly, for the 2 years i designed these products i failed to properly document them for a portfolio, on account of there was just so much work and not nearly enough time to think of a personal goal, a solid reflection of over 300 designs. The London Drugs was found on a bike in Victoria BC, somewhere near the Ferry while waiting to go back home from a very cold weekend of snow and slushy BEER with Big E, one of the two owners of the previously Tofino's Raven Skate Shop.

Now Mr. Black there, well he never made the cut, and not for reason of everyone wanting to be Mr.Black and Mr. Pink getting all whiny again. No, this was due to licensing and another name was already bought and paid for. what did i do? Well i did what any self respecting creative would do, i blurred the copy, added the new name and kept the artwork i believed to be the best for the product. Yes, that is my face on over 300,000 bikes out there on the streets of the world- it was bound to happen. I still think the Top Bike companies are missing out on some great possibilities for design on bikes, but their getting it a bit more now...

Bikes everywhere!

One of the most challenging positions I have follow up on, by either a staff member of as Peg DEsign, as been that of designing and painting for the bike industry. To this date, i still see a constant flow of my designs at any given day throughout the week. Now, i also designed a fair amount of snowboards for some of the same companies and have never seen a single board with my designs on them, well maybe a few...

The North Shore News had this on the front cover this past summer, and it blew me away that that particular bike was being raced, and that she did rather well with it. It was a price point of $259.00 back in 2002- 2004 and i think i was changed (frame wise) after then, so the bike basically was a low cost casual mountain bike, intended for weekend campgrounds, not a triathlon! I was very proud of this woman when i read this.

The above are some of the designs that made it out. The Cove bike was ridden by Trevor Porter, now currently with Kona for the 2003 World Cup in Scotland. The Graphics has incorporated sponsor logos and Rider names to flow along the frames curved design. The back end was a prototype at the time and so it was left with me to play around with while it was unfinished. The job was simple and i was never really paid for it, but Trevor did rebuild my front forks:) The Antelope was a fun set of graphics that was never used. The base bikes came in with an exist paint scheme that had two tone splits the client liked
and so i had to design 6 bikes all with blockers. Not many companies save Specialized, Giant and Trek use this technique, even with the newer printing methods available.

This is still an industry i would like to be more involved with and will be setting up my own dirt machine with new paint and matching graphics, which of course will be presented later on this blog.

Product Design; Bicycles

Year: 2003

Model: Electra

Client: Costco

Task: Design graphics to fit frame and design and paint paint scheme to match. Package design was also created and a one day photo shoot for the project was given. The Electra was one of Costco's best selling children's bikes sold to date.

Outcome: Production of over 300,000 units to date.