Bike Vs Design.

Last week I took part in an evening-long bike themed extravaganza at the Design Museum in Shad Thames. From a personal point of view it was a huge honour. I’ve been trekking up to the Design Museum since I was at school, pouring over different exhibitions, being made to sketch things.

If even 5years ago, someone had told me I would not only be giving a little talk in the Design Museum, let alone one on bikes, I’d have laughed in their face! I suppose it’s testament to how much cycling has boomed (in London at least) in the last few years. The Designed to Win exhibit is a summer-long installation, sponsored by Oakley glasses and if you haven’t been along I would urge you to take a look. Obviously it was all put in before the Olympics kicked off, but with that in mind it is fascinating to get up close to a variety of different objects such as the Wheelchair Rugby chairs.

My talk was 15 minutes long and was meant to be about your bike, but I chose to talk about the Super Acciaio, why we had made it, how we went about developing it and the design process. That’s quite a lot to squeeze into 15 minutes once you get on a roll.

The first time, I read my notes word for word in front of an alarmingly large crowd. They were highly appreciative though I felt my own delivery was a bit klunky and although I got everything across that I wanted, some questiona afterwards made me realize I needed a bit of a rearrange.

So for my second talk, I kept my notes in my pocket and freestyled it.  A quick reshuffle to incorporate the points I wanted to get across meant I left out a couple but then,  a couple of questions at the end handily afforded me the opportunity to refer back to those points.