#rustawol

tRUST ME, I’M A DESIGNER

The project was crowned with a Brooks Cambium rust saddle and bar tape where the fabric matches the bike and the vulcanized rubber matches the tan wall tires nicely. As a last step I gave the Supernova headlamp and the Tubus rack a kiss of iron oxide. The humid and cold San Francisco summer will continue to corrode and oxidize the surface even though it’s been sealed with a clear coat as I surprisingly discovered in some close up shots today. I learned a ton on this project, got my hands dirty and created a bike that’s really fun. I love that I sometimes can show you the hands-on process of being a designer at a big brand when 90% of my work never leaves the design studio. Confidentiality keeps us all from sharing what I know a lot of you like seeing and know more about. Personally, the making-of-dvd in the Indiana Jones DVD box is far superior to the movies themselves and getting dirty the only way to learn something new. 

tRUST ME, I’M A DESIGNER, Words by EN / Team AWOL

tRUST ME, I’M A DESIGNER, Words by EN / Team AWOL

My colleague Barry Gibb had previously used the Rustique rusy paint to create a fantastic surface on a carbon bike ( the #Rustvenge ) and I wanted to try it to, on steel this time. We ordered some paint and decided that this nickel plated AWOL would be the victim for this experiment. The month of June is usually pretty mellow at work (read: not as completely fucking crazy as July and August) and I spent some afternoons in the workshop and paint booth to finish off this creative experiment in an effort to bring real organic life back to a surface that’s dead.

tRUST ME, I’M A DESIGNER, Words by EN / Team AWOL

As a designer of bicycles I try to stay on top of things like material development, new alloys, paint pigment, flakes, pearls, plating’s and whatnot. It’s in my interest to stay updated in an ever changing world. What you see on the floor in a bike shop is not just a bicycle with a random color; it’s the result of hundreds or thousands of hours of trial and error behind the scenes at any one man bike shop or huge bike brand with a fleet of designers. That one color started out as 666 other potential colors and in the end, only one made it. For the one man operation or smaller brand in a well-defined niche it might be easier to do cool and crazy shit to please that one customer with that weird ask of a thermochromatic dead matt black that fades to metallic peach with a pride parade pearl to top it off.

I design bicycles for a global brand and need to create a bike that pleases a global rider and as you all know, trends and cultural differences around the globe vary, fluctuate and make my day pretty complicated. I’ll be honest with you; it’s frustrating to rarely ever be able to bring the radest and weirdest stuff to you. One example is the one off Full Nuke Rainbow AWOL I created for the Transcontinental Race, a bike that almost blew up the internet when The Radavist posted it. So much stoke and love was thrown on that bike but the reality is that it would be impossible to produce it, guarantee the surface quality, get a decent price and distribute it to you. Doing rad stuff is easy but mass producing it is a completely different story. So, I try a lot of surface treatments and materials but most often these tryouts, experiments never leave the design studio as more than dirt on my hands, stains on my jeans and once in a while, a painted one off bicycle that I can tell you about. TBC...