When mucking around in software circles it’s sometimes necessary to argue that design refers to how things work, not just how they look. Make things useful before making them pretty, if at all. Craigslist and Amazon are hideous, but are both fantastic designs for getting things done. Twitter outsources the pretty in order to grapple with hockey-stick growth, spam and other nonsense.
Bikes are the same. Give me an old Motobecane rather than that sweet ride pictured above. With the IF-Mode folding bike (below), Mark Sanders makes the pendulum swing the other way. I want the things we touch every day to be beautiful, as well as handy. At 32 lbs it still weighs less than my little babies. Look out, I might just start wearing clothes from Swrve, then you’ll see me riding around town like a dandy.
Related posts:
- Let the cross-training begin