Bikes in design mags; that seems to be a reoccurring theme here on Bicycle Design. This week I received my copies of ID Magazine, Innovation, and the DWR Holiday 2007 booklet. Not surprisingly, all of them had bike content.
In ID’s “New and Notable ’07″ issue, they featured the Trek Lime and the Jorg & Olif Oma and Opa bikes. Also, it is worth noting, ID is giving away select products from the issue include a Lime in week 2 of the contest. Read more about it here.
Innovation included the Key bicycle rack and the Cascuz commuter helmet in its 2007 Yearbook of Design Excellence. Elsewhere in the issue was an article about past IDEA winners, which mentioned the Ribbon Rack. That design has no doubt been a commercial success (you see them everywhere), but I am not a big fan of it. In most cases, people lock their bikes sideways against the rack just like they would with an inverted-U design. Though pictures of the rack show several bikes placed in the individual spaces that are formed by the shape, that does not seem to be a practical way to really use it. Two points of contact are required for a bike to be stable against a rack, so most of the Ribbon Racks in existence end up being used just like extended inverted-U racks (not an efficient use of space).
The DWR Gifts Booklet this year features two bicycles. You can order the Biomega AMS or the Electrobike Pi. The latter sells for a whopping 8 grand, making it a pretty expensive Christmas gift by my standards. By the way, if any of you out there are considering buying me an $8,000 bike this year (and I know that is what you were all thinking), I should let you know that the Pi wouldn’t be my first choice.
Metropolis had an online article about the Shimano Coasting equipped Giant Suede DX. They point out some of the bike’s features like the 2 laptop-sized panniers and the front cell phone bag with an integrated light. Read about more features that the bike’s designer pointed out in the article.
Lastly, I want to mention that Bicycle Design will probably not be updated for the next couple of weeks. I will be traveling in China and my access to the web will be limited (my access to Blogger will be even more limited if at all). I will post if I can, but I might not be able to until I return. In the mean time, if you are itching for new content, check out some of the great blogs that I have listed in the sidebar.
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