Hi again y’all, yep I’m back again so soon. I have been trying to do some work on the branding/concept side of things, which I fundamentally hate in a lot of ways. However, I do like a cohesive aesthetic, and one thing that I’ve been missing is a headbadge. Every brand has one, and they can be a fun exercise in design if you just let it be fun. Not my strong suit! However, everyone that I’ve ever even talked to about building a bike for has asked what my headbadge looks like, and I haven’t had an answer for the last decade or so. Given that the bike shops are slowing down this time of year, I had some down time and started to do some drafting. I think I will want to have a few different designs that I rotate amongst bikes depending on the style and colorway of the bike in question. I’m still working on sketches and doodles, so there isn’t anything really ready to rage yet, but here are some options that I’ve been fleshing out:
Lowercase alpha and letter c for akratic cycles!
Big Alpha/Letter a and letter C for Akratic Cycles
Still playing with dimensions and proportions on this notion, it’s a little too Captain America as it is now. I like the idea of a round headbadge though, so I’m not giving up on it yet-
Some sloppy lettering, this would more likely exist as a sticker or logo, but could be a painted badge as well
So as you can see, no real winners yet. But it has been fun to think about the letter elements and how to frame them, how they could work with the lines and colors of a paint scheme, and to figure out how to make them laser or water jet cuttable for reproducibility. It feels self indulgent to me- I’ll never forget when I was working at Bike Gallery in Portland in 2011 or so and my coworker Emily (who I since built a bike for!) laughed at me for doodling sketches and coming up with brand names for bikes that I had no idea how to build yet. She said, “That’s like picking the name for your band before you know how to play an instrument!” and she was right. But at this point, I do know which side of the instrument to blow into, so I think I can come back to picking out names and merch designs. Drop me a line if you have strong feelings of one of these over another, especially if you have a water jet or laser cutter and can see a clear winner here. It’s been fun, damn it!