so you like the logos? i´m just asking.

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Happy Trails !!!
MTB / Giant Xtc '05 / 8.7Kg
ROAD / La Perla Negra - FM015 / 7.0Kg

Liggero -- let me properly address the font and some of the past responses.

First of all, the logo is NOT hideous. It's Yataghan that originated from Turkish knives. A little unusual, and some may not like it. That's OK. But the typical educated gentleman, as most of you guys consider yourselves to be, would not really use the word "hideous" in responding to someone's project bike even if you secretly think it's hideous. But it's a bit unusual that it has happened here so often.

I was also reading the other thread about Thomas Voeckler being criticized a lot despite riding his hearts out and keeping the yellow jersey for many days with a decent final placing, really because he is French, short, has a weird mouth, and is not cool or smooth. So sometimes people just feel it's OK to shit on the Asian/French/Little guy.

Besides, fonts are really overrated. Most of the highly respected and successful companies/products have fairly bland or even ugly logos/fonts. Colnago, for example. You can google the rest.

But font is not the only thing. A titanium dropout that is typical for MOOTS (and many have used different expressions of masturbation to compliment its beauty) and Linskey etc. is all of a sudden a major problem on my bike.

Ww is notorious for favoring small and toned-down lettering. That's OK too. Truth is, my decal maker, who works for several European and Taiwanese bike brands (as well as Shimano's carbon wheels), told me my full SET of decals (which refers to the square piece of paper on which all the decals for ONE frame are laid out) is smaller than most models of other brands. So bear that in mind.

Someone also blasted this bike for lack of any innovation earlier. Truth is, it's 3 times more innovative than a Spesh SL4, for example. I am proud of the cable routing, and this bike won an innovation award at the Shanghai Bike Show (along with Giant and Merida). The organizers personally apologized to me for giving Giant and Merida higher places even though they liked my bike a lot more, but explained those two were the show's biggest sponsors so their hands were bound.

It's really odd that at both the Taipei and SH bike shows, accomplished (caucasian) designers of some very successful bike models would come by and chat with me for 30mins, 1 hr, or even longer, squatting near the rear derailleur for long whiles, requesting opportunities to cooperate or share the same manufacturing facility, and showing a lot of apprciation and the excitement of a fellow designer when they see something "cool" or "clever". A former Radioshack pro found this bike "really sexy". So it's odd that ww seems to have so many "nice, but ..." responses.

Right now, I am an executive at a global financial institution with an Ivy League degree and have been in legal and financial industries for over a decade in several major financial centers of the world, so I have seen a fair bit of bias, bigotry and hatred. Normally I shat on them back. But this is ww, which I consider a home. So, please let's all be nice.

Lastly, deep apologies to anyone who may be offended or displeased by the response. This will be the only response of this nature from me in this thread. Let's focus on the bike, because we are all a bunch of guys passionate about the sport of cycling and light and beautiful bikes, so it shouldn't be hard to do.

PS: it's OK to criticize. Just be fair and go easy.

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Fast falcons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3mTPEuFcWk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Great bike and cool-headed post.

As a fellow non-white person, i feel compelled to say that I suspect that many of the vocal and offensive responses here are due not to your ethnicity, but to the fact that you are an inspired WW and we want to see you succeed in this venture. We all know full well that decals and aesthetics play a huge role in selling bikes. Unfortunately, this is your bikes weakest spot by a long, long shot. Fortunately, it's easy to fix. With so many great features, the Falco might be a great hit. But not until the decals get sorted, at least in my very humble and very vain opinion.

Best of luck with your project and thanks for the great thread!

@elviento - every time I see the new photos of the carbon bike I think about Storcks. Not the same but it has quite a resemblance to me. Not that it's a bad thing by any means either. Every time you post new photo's it seems to look more refined

The font is totally fine... can't believe anyone has an issue with it. I don't like the seat tube graphics however...

I'd guess that people are picky because they are envious... ie they wish they were doing what you are doing. So they put themselves in your place and fantasize that this is *their* design.

Every brand out there has some sort of issues with aesthetics depending on who you talk to. Honestly if you are unhappy with it, change it. I was not happy with my SLC so I changed it to what I am happy with. This frame would be easy to change. The point is that you go for a bike that has the features that you like as the appearance can be changed but other major things can not.

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BIG DADDY B FLOW
AERO & LIGHT is RIGHT

Cervelo SLC 5890g/12.98 lbs

As yet "another" designer on this board, I have to disagree with the final comment.
"Good" designers are passionate about what they do. They have to be. They spend a ridiculous amount of time sweating over every line, curve and colour of their designs. Waaaay more than you might think and they are passionate about their work.
And being passionate, they see good and bad design everywhere they look. I know I do.
Most of the time you just shrug it off or have a giggle at bad design. But this is a product we (WW designers) are passionate about - a kick-ass bicycle!
So we feel compelled to help and suggest and, yes- even complain. Heck I would be happy to put my hand up to help for free if not for the fact that others have already done so.

Non-designers typically dismiss a designers work as "its just a logo".
But I'd say that is the opinion of someone with a blinkered view. I see this all the time from clients very focused on their product but lacking a design education.

There is plenty of very good bikes out there that lack respect partially due to the fact that their graphics are sub standard.
Think about Fuji for example. Until recently, they were not really taken seriously as a road racing bike. But look at them now- a design overhaul and they get respect (yes I know they also improved the actual product but with the old graphics- tell me you would consider it as your next bike?).
Merida could take a huge chunk of the market if they did a design overhaul. Currently its very average.

Anyway, I think the bike looks very interesting and I give the owner full kudos for what he's doing. And no, I don't think the logo is hideous. It just needs more refining. Its a good start- just not quite there yet. But that's just my opinion.

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Yet another cycling designer- http://www.vidmandesign.com/

Regarding fonts, I don't think it's inherently bad, I just think it doesn't complement the design ethos. This is a modern, high tech bicycle but the logo puts me more in mind of something vaguely tribal and medieval - initially I thought it looked Celtic.

Just my opinion, and I still think the bike design looks great.

As one of the posters who commented on the dropouts, I would say that it's not at all "suddenly a major problem" on your bike. I don't like those style dropouts, period. I don't care if they're on a Moots, Linksys, or any other brand. I've had similar (not exact) style dropouts on a custom steel frame before and always hated their awkwardness for both skewers and putting the frame in some trainers. It's more a matter of function for me.

The design comments that have transpired are relevant too. But so much with "design" is subjective. Sometimes, a design can be neutral and a lot of people will accept it without being wowed by it or repulsed by it. And designs can be very polarizing as well, where some people love it and other people hate it (Pinarellos wavy tubes come to mind here). At the end of the day, as a one man show the design decision is up to you. If you offer it for sale, then the market will decide if they like your design or not. And let's face it, a lot of bicycles are very similar underneath the paint, but the paint catches our eyes, and we either like what we see or we don't. I once bought a good moutain bike (at the time) on sale for a very good price since it was left over from the prior year, probably because of the colour. I didn't like the colour either, but knew the bike itself was good. I thought I could look beyond the colour. But it was just plain ugly, and I never did grow to like that bike and eventually sold it to a friend's kid. Good riddance.

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My Colnago C59
My Special Colnago EPQ

How can you expect people to acknowledge and respect the design, innovation and engineering of the frame itself, when the first thing they see is a clumsy free web font slapped on the frame?

The knives concept could be great but it's just not well executed. Don't let poor graphic design water down what you have created. You know the frame is great, but your potentional customers will judge it in seconds, mostly by the looks.

I've been designing mostly for sports industry clients for the last 7 years, 10+ years in graphic design business and running my own design company...

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Slammed. Campy. Tubulars.

Font is not a small detail- typography makes a huge difference. Sorry if they didn't teach you that in business school, but maybe you should open yourself up to some comments by people with expertise in other fields? Something that small can make or break a sale for a potential customer (not always), and you can still have something different without it looking bad.

The frames look cool otherwise and I'm sure that they ride just fine. But yes, many of the lower end companies that export from Asia use terrible, yet flashy design features such as bad fonts that make the bikes less attractive.

I'd like to second (and third, and fourth) vidman's comments.

Not sure you want to hear from another designer ElViento, but this little video may help for a crash-course in why fonts and typography matter...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lfE3Q4kiSE

(warning: it's quite old. Filmed in the early 80's I believe. Watch the whole thing, it's only 7 minutes long.)
(And the dude in the video is the equivalent of a living Eddie Merckx in the typography world.)

and that's just the start. Then we can get into the actual graphics (if necessary), as vidman eluded to.

And yes, elviento, I concur with your sentiments regarding the bias/racism on this board.

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Exp001

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Cervelo R3, Campagnolo Chorus/Record mix... pastatrails.blogspot.com
And you can call me Macktastik Honey Pete Kicks, thank you.

elviento,

So when will the TI frame be available ?

Look, I´m just trying to help and give my 2 cents input about branding, logo, graphic design, product image, etc... etc... Some others may help you with this too, but it requires much more time and ways of expressing that the ones offered by this forum.

You can not compare brands like colnago or storck, with awful logos with your logos. their logos are bad, but they represent the quality of a certain brand, with history. you should make it better than them, not worse. These brands may be good, but their logos are truly crap, specially Storck. and still, your logos are more tribal like, more for a Thai food restaurant, with all my due respect. Again, it's in the opposite side of bike performance, but is on the first focus of brand perception and product perception and image.

Watch the film "Helvetica", it may help you. I love the frame though, seems really good to me. Logos and fonts sucks, sorry but that is my opinion. Can I say my opinion or I should be banned for that? can't you stand a critic opinion about fonts and logos? I would prefer to buy it with no logos if possible. Same with a Storck bike. Now, if you look at Sony digital components, their font is very similar to colnago and Storck, but it produces on the observer a much better image. Why? is is because it's a shorter word, so it's more logo like? it's because the little nuances and modifications on that font to suit the word sony? it's because its history and the image created on our brains with their advertising? just think about it for a while, it's much more important that what it seems at the beginning. Think about Klein bikes logos, those are great, think about the ATTITUDE fonts used for their Klein attitude bike, they are really good for the time, they use the shadow only. Or maybe they are not that good, but they transfer that image of indy fabrication and quality versus a big corporation. Klein is a surname, not the name of an animal. IT ALL MATTERS IN BUSINESS. You should care the most about everything, otherwise you are *f##k* up. that's business.

Good luck.

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Happy Trails !!!
MTB / Giant Xtc '05 / 8.7Kg
ROAD / La Perla Negra - FM015 / 7.0Kg