Sep '08 - Feb '10
Right now, I really wish I could be a normal graphic designer and just print things on paper and be done with it. It would be so much less work. But I can't bring myself to do it, so I end up building things, melting things, making things out of strange stuff for every big project that I do. It's fun, but right now it has me dead tired.
People have been asking me to post more about my thesis, so I figured I'd show you the material experiments that have been going on. One component of my thesis is something that I'm calling BikeStops (because BikeStation was taken!), which is a resource center that has a map of where bike facilities are, a water fountain, and an air pump, and in city locations some parking as well. The overall shape is fairly regular, but the fun bit is that one wall of each of them is made out of bike parts---wheels, gear hubs, frames, or handlebars---assembled and powdercoated. See cheesy process Sketchup renderings below...
So for my thesis exhibit I'm going to do a material sample of this stuff. The wheels seemed like the easiest thing to mock up, so after getting donations of dead wheels from Recycled Cycles and the ASUW Bike Shop, I set out today to see how exactly they were going to be attached. After trying to find drive rivets to no avail, trying out some hammerscrews, I ended up with a pretty standard bolt assembly: locknuts are the key to everything! This was done with some of my uh, less gently used wheels:
I'm saving back the wheels that are more true and whole for the final piece, which will be an array 2 wheels wide by 4 wheels high, which will get powdercoated in Kawasaki green after I get it built over the weekend.
Not satisfied with building and powdercoating things, the cover of my final thesis book (yes, for graphic designers the design of the book itself actually matters!) is going to be made of dead bike tubes, courtesy of a sweet local company called Alchemy Goods. Unfortunately I couldn't get that material donated, but I guess you can't have everything! Anyway, so my next challenge is to figure out how to compensate for the slightly warped texture of the material and turn it into a professional looking binding job. Stay tuned...
3 Comments
alchemy has some interesting products but i think the price points are ridiculously high for what it is...
like freitag high.
I agree, from a shopping-for-bags point of view it's not something I can afford. But from the perspective of this project, given that I was already using old bike parts cobbled together into a planar surface... I just couldn't pass it up. Plus, I do really appreciate the work they do: the craftsmanship is good, and they upcycle busted tubes from 300 bike shops nationwide, and then participate in a rubber recycling program with anything they can't use, as well as rescuing seatbelts from wrecked cars. So while I can't afford their bags, at $12.50 per bookcover-sized swatch, the material was too good of a match for the aesthetic and ideals of this project to pass up.
Erin rubber can generally be unforgiving but try cutting it into smaller pieces, heat them with an iron and then reconnect them perhaps using thread or perhaps the adhesive rubber repair kits
anyway very cool project
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