If you don’t have the luxury of a garage, finding adequate bike storage can be a bit of a challenge. Over the years my bikes have been moved from one location to another more often than displaced refugees. Some people give their bikes pride of place in their living rooms, while others tuck them away out of sight. This new project called SPIN by photographer Ben Roberts, showcases some of London’s unique fixed gear bikes in their own habitats.
These prints by Adams Carvalho are popping up pretty much everywhere. And for good reason: they’re awesome!
San Francisco-based designer Ven Gist created a mind-blowingly awesome embossed poster for the Art Crank poster show.
Living in San Francisco, where we are known for our multiple steep and inescapable hills, the concept of “hill or no hill — ride your bike” began to take form. I hand traced an old topography map of SF, traced it in Illustrator and separated the levels into vector layers and sent the file to many embossers for quotes, most of which were outrageous. After getting a reasonable quote, a sculptor used my illustrator file to hand engrave the topography of San Francisco into a brass die and emboss my self-printed sheets. Two versions of the poster were made. One for the show, with the word “RIDE” printed on top of the embossing which sold out, and another alternate version with the embossed area clean of type.
Multilevel dies are exponentially more expensive than single level dies because they have to made out of brass and must be engraved. Also, it pays to take the time to ensure that you send embossers the most detailed files you can as you only get one shot at the die or you’ll have to pay for another one.
BADASS.
This is beautiful and sad all at once.
Ghost bikes are small and somber memorials for cyclists who are killed or hit on the street. A bicycle is painted all white and locked to a street sign near the crash site. They serve as reminders of the tragedy that took place on an otherwise anonymous street corner, and as quiet statements in support of cyclists right to safe travel.
Rest more about the fallen riders at www.ghostbikes.org
A while back, creative agency Airside submitted a cycling poster to Transport for London to promote winter cycling by offering some useful tips on how to improve the experience. Unfortunately TfL didn’t go for their take on the uh, seminal 70s illustrated sex manual, The Joy of Sex – possibly due to all that disturbing facial hair. But thankfully for us, Airside finally decided to take it down from their top shelf and expose it to the world.
