Year: 2015
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Switching gears… find me now at JCT.design
After ten years of blogging at Bicycle Design, it’s time for me to move on. This post may seem a bit like déjà vu to those of you who remember my “final” post from February of last year, but this time I really do need to shift my focus to other projects and goals. I won’t…
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Aerodynamic and structural development of the Specialized Venge (Q&A with Mike Barton of Altair)
By now, anyone reading this has likely seen the recent redesign of the Specialized Venge aero road bike. In the development of the new Venge, Specialized engineers used Altair’s HyperWorks software suite “to analyze and improve the aerodynamic performance of the bike as well as optimize the weight and structural efficiency of the frame.”…
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A Leitra velomobile redesign by Kuba Szankowski
For his final project in Mechanical Engineering at the Danish Technical University, Israeli born Danish citizen Kuba Szankowski designed a velomobile based on the classic Leitra design. He worked closely on the project with Carl Georg Rasmussen of Leitra, who “at eighty years young still builds and maintains all the velomobiles, as well as most any…
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The top 25 posts from 10 years of Bicycle Design
I can hardly believe that it’s been a full decade since I started this blog by posting one of my old marker renderings. Though I started with a few of my own sketches, what really kept me interested in blogging were the design submissions from others that I began to receive in those first few…
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Three interesting bikes from Eurobike 2015
It’s that time of year again. Bike show season kicked off on Wednesday with the opening of Eurobike 2015 in Friedrichshafen, Germany. One of the big stories from the show this year seems to wireless electronic shifting. SRAM’s new RED eTap system is getting a lot of positive press, and FSA is showing a prototype…
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Evolution of the Windcheetah- a guest post by Karl Sparenberg
I am a big fan of Mike Burrows, and have mentioned his work quite a few times over the years at Bicycle Design. In 2012, lifelong “cycling fanatic” and engineer Karl Sparenberg of Advanced Velo Design took over production of Burrows’ Windcheetah recumbent trike, and has been working on improving the materials and manufacturability of the…
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More on the Specialized Eff You See Eye (fUCI)
An earlier version of Specialized Creative Director Robert Egger’s “Eff You See Eye” concept bike was mentioned on Bicycle Design a couple months ago (in a post that was also featured on Core77). At that time, the personal project bike was just a teaser, a partially assembled primer grey prototype, but now Specialized has released…
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Velox Volcane, a home-built carbon and aluminum bike by Richard Machin
Back in the mid nineties, I remember being completely fascinated with Damon Rinard’s “How I Made a Carbon Fiber Bike in My Garage” article (20+ years later, you should still check out the archive of his old Tech Pages if you never saw them, and read a recent interview with Rinard at Slowtwitch). I…
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Scott concept bikes by Julien Delcambre
Julien Delcambre currently works as a watch designer in Switzerland, but in a previous job at Scott Sports he designed a few interesting concept bikes. He points out on his Behance page that his main mission at Scott was to redesign the old Gambler (a full suspension mountain bike). He was in charge of…
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A Red Dot Award for the Gocycle G2
The Gocycle folding electric bike was first mentioned on Bicycle Design in early 2009. At the time, its clean design with a fully enclosed drivetrain seemed quite innovative. Six years later, the latest Gocycle G2 is still an innovative design, which is why it was recently awarded a 2015 Red Dot prize for Product…
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Art bikes by Handsome Cycles at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
To celebrate their 100th birthday, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) teamed up with Handsome Cycles to bring some of the MIA’s most famous masterpieces to life in the form of three art-inspired bikes. According to MIA Venture Innovation Director Hunter Wright, “The MIA is excited to partner with Handsome Cycles, a company that shares the museum’s commitment…
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A peek in to the design of the 2016 Trek Madone 9
In case you didn’t hear, there was a little race going on in France the last few weeks. Despite the fact that Froome was in yellow for much of the Tour as expected, this was an exciting race to watch (and I was bummed to not be in Paris at the finish again). In…
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LIVALL Bling Smart Helmet
A few weeks ago, I mentioned a couple of interesting helmet designs that recently caught my attention. Both of those helmets, the Closca Fuga and the Lumos helmet, include technology based features, but the latest helmet from Chinese company Livall takes the idea of a high tech “smart” helmet to a whole new level.…
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Bringley, a compact cargo bike by Lawrence Brand
In 2008, Lawrence Brand, of Porterlight Bicycles, decided that he needed a cargo bike, but he didn’t have a secure place outside his London apartment to store one. He found that existing cargo bikes on the market were too long and heavy, so out of necessity the idea for Bringley was born. The bike…
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A couple of interesting new helmet designs
Folding helmets have been around for a while, but most of the ones that I have seen fold or compress laterally. The Closca Fuga is different though. It compresses from the top down, reducing its volume by more than 50% for easy storage in a purse, bag or backpack. The clean aesthetics are nice…
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Very Special Things
I don’t know Robert Egger, but I remember seeing his picture in a 1992 issue of Bicycling Magazine (along with David Schultz, the other Specialized S-Works designer at the time). When I read that article about “Future Bikes” 20+ years ago, I was about to graduate with a degree in Industrial Design, and the…
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A couple of fast bikes (if you have the right motor)
I have been busy with quite a few different projects lately, so it has been nearly three weeks since I last found time to post here at BicycleDesign. Recently though, a couple of really nice aero road bikes have been introduced and have quickly been spreading around the web. The new Specialized Venge ViAS…
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Come on UCI…it’s time to allow innovation in the Hour Record again
I wrote a bit about my confusion with the UCI after Jens Voight set a new athlete’s (or unified, or whatever we are calling it now) hour record in September of last year. After watching Bradley Wiggins ride an impressive new distance Sunday, I am excited to see that interest in the hour record is…