Hasta La Ideas

Reporting by Kat Baumann

It’s no secret or mystery that designers love to reengineer bicycle stuff. Bikes are fun and ubiquitous, simple yet challenging. What may be less clear to the untrained eye is that most creative bike designs are impractical and embarrassing in action.

What does it take to make waves in an industry whose key technology is a motorless wheel? I’d argue for three things: novelty, practicality and sweet, sweet engineering. Touch on only one of those and any bike snob worth their salt will roll their eyes, sigh into their latte (for actual mechanics, substitute cold coffee or warm beer), and try to forget. Don’t fret, I offer here a quick case study in how to make people love your wonky bike idea: Kinn Bikes, makers of the Cascade Flyer commuter-cargo bike.

Attractive Yet Burly

1.) The Cascade Flyer is a midtail city bike, a designation that Kinn helped to pioneer, and one that no one else is making. The Kinn creation myth starts with founder Alistair Williamson’s desire to comfortably pack grandkids onto a tough sporty bike, a desire he was unable to meet without making his own. Williamson has a keen eye for design details, having previously worked as an engineer and designer at Tektronix and his own high-tech startup, but he’s not alone his needs. Since the debut of extra-freaking-long “longtail” cargo bicycles, many a rider and mechanic has grumbled about the lack of this just-right, in-betweeny style. It’s got built-in bells and whistles all over, and for the knockout, it’s made in the U.S. Novelty: achieved.

2. This thing can haul hundreds of pounds on the back, but it still feels like a snazzily built city bike. Looks like one too. Unloaded, it’s got quick handling without being twitchy, great balance, solid frame construction without feeling bloated, and carefully chosen parts that won’t irritate the life out of you once you’ve used them for a season. The spec’d parts illustrate parental knowledge and general thoughtfulness: that double kickstand isn’t a luxury if your cargo squirms, disc brakes are the most sane option for encumbered commuting, and the front wheel “lock” gets the long frame onto a bus rack and saved me at least one black eye. Plus, it’s got accessory eyelets as far as the eye can see.

“Are we there yet?”

Sloshily loaded to the child seat’s maximum weight, I got through the standard two second take-off wobble and then actually forgot my awkward waterbaby was with me. While top-heavy loads are inherently unwieldy, I could still accelerate nicely and without the skeevy wheelie feelings that often come with a heavy back-end. Even for this remarkably short and remarkably cranky ex-mechanic, the whole bike was liftable, fittable and comfortable. With some tweaks to bar height, it would feel uncannily like my own city bikes. I put a grown ass co-worker on the back to check for rack stiffness and front end flex. I got nothing but bell ringing and motorcycle noises from behind. Pragmatism: activated!

3. The designers and engineers tinkering with this bad jamma have logged years working on bikes, riding bikes, crashing bikes, welding bikes, and trying to stick kids to bikes. They have (or have at least talked to people who have) firsthand experience with the system requirements for making this brain baby work. The prototype frames were made by a local bike-building guru and a fabrication company whose welders and engineers work specifically on bikes. No blissful ignorance here. The construction strikes a balance between functionality, geometry and industry standards, which makes this weird thing totally kick ass when it could so easily have been a Charlie Brown football kick on wheels. Engineering: nailed it.

On a visit to the Kinn workshop, I talked with Operations Manager Max Miller, a lifelong bike mechanic, fabricator, ex-sushi chef and Yamaguchi-certified builder, about the oddities and prospects of their new line of bikes.

What is a Kinn bike, and how does a midtail differ from a standard bike?

Max Miller: The only bike we make right now is the Cascade Flyer. It’s our “midtail” city bike, a transport bike for families. Midtail is a classification that Joseph Ahearne coined. It’s not a longtail like an Xtracycle, but it’s longer than normal bikes… which aren’t called shorttails. Bobtail maybe?

Our bikes are 6” longer than an equivalently-sized commuter bike, with a built-in rack that is part of the frame and designed to carry both heavy cargo and passengers safely. It’s specifically designed around the idea of being able to carry a kid on the back of the bike, plus groceries or kid-related stuff. But it’s not exclusively for people with children, it’s really for anyone who wants to conveniently carry more than moderately sized loads. It can carry more than you can manage on a normal bike or even a touring bike, but for people who don’t need a full on cargo-specific bike.

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Le réalisateur Evan Viera a imaginé cette vidéo afin d’illustrer l’EP de Le Castle Vania intitulé « Prophication ». Une animation 3D à l’ambiance futuriste très réussie, collant parfaitement à l’univers musical de l’artiste américain. A découvrir en images et en vidéo dans la suite de l’article.

Graphic designer Cristina Vanko has been writing out all the SMS messages she sends by hand with a calligraphy pen.

Calling the project Modern Day Snail Mail, Cristina Vanko began to answer friends’ text messages with photographs of handwritten replies after finding her father’s old calligraphy pen.

“Basically, calligraphy is something that people just don’t get enough of today,” Vanko said in a post about the project on her blog, explaining that the soft gold tip of the pen allows for different thicknesses of stroke.

“The harder you press down on the pen’s nib, the thicker the line. When less pressure is given, the thinner the line,” she explained.

“I quickly began creating illustrious letterforms with the perfect balance of thick and thin strokes,” she continued. “I wrote out the alphabet, popular phrases, curse words (that looked beautiful might I add) and then I sent doodle-filled text messages to a couple of my design-y friends notifying them about the magic of this pen.”

“After texting some doodles, I decided to send handwritten messages to people for that next week,” she said.

Some friends responded with their own hand-written messages and the designer concluded that “people feel more ‘special’ when they received handwritten messages.”

She also noted that accuracy in spelling and grammar matter much more in a handwritten note and that modern culture relies heavily on emoticons for communication.

Cristina Vanko graduated in graphic design and Spanish from Indiana University in 2011 and now works as a multidisciplinary designer in Chicago.

Other stories about lettering on Dezeen include a typeface with strands of human hair, a font made of impossible 3D shapes and another font made of sugar.

See more stories about typography »

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by Cristina Vanko appeared first on Dezeen.

Ricevo sempre piacevolamente aggiornamenti da Different Lab grazie ai loro impeccabili lavori. Ora è la volta del video recap sulla Macro Expo di Padova e il torneo internazionale di polo che si è svolto durante i giorni della manifestazione.

Product news: London architect Zaha Hadid has designed a curvaceous wine bottle for Austrian winemaker Leo Hillinger.

Zaha Hadid created the limited-edition design for Leo Hillinger‘s Icon Hill 2009 vintage red wine, of which 999 bottles were made.

One side has a concave indentation with the same curve as the back of the bottle so a row of them can interlock. A dimple in the base allows sediment to gather and provides a thumb hold for pouring.

“The elongated volume of the bottle has been derived from the profile of liquid droplets,” said Hadid. “A continuous spatial curve was then projected onto the bottle’s surface, defining areas for the concave indentation and suggesting the waves created when droplets break a liquid’s surface.”

The shape was created using NURB-based software, then the glassware was formed in cast-iron moulds.

It comes in a box with the form of the bottle cut from striations, a common feature of Hadid’s designs. See our feature on striations in architecture and design here.

Other designs for alcohol we’ve featured include packaging for coffee-flavoured beer designed by Nendo and a set of seven wine glasses inspired by the seven deadly sins.

See more architecture and design by Zaha Hadid »
See more design for drinking »

Icon Hill is an exceptional red wine cuvee of 2009 vintage, produced by the renowned Austrian winemaker Leo Hillinger in a limited edition of 999 bottles that have been designed by Zaha Hadid Architects to reflect the wine’s bold and distinctive character.

The elongated volume of the bottle has been derived from the profile of liquid droplets. A continuous spatial curve was then projected onto the bottle’s surface, defining areas for the concave indentation and suggesting the waves created when droplets break a liquid’s surface.

The concave indentation and the bottle’s surface have the same curvature, enabling a set of bottles to interlock and be perceived as singular whole. A smaller indent and volume has been created at the base of the bottle for correct handling and to accommodate any tartrates.

To achieve the precision and accuracy required for production, the shape of the bottle was created using NURB-based CAD software. The bottle manufacturer directly implemented this 3D master geometry to produce the cast iron moulds for the glass forming process.

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for Leo Hillinger appeared first on Dezeen.