Hi Everybody! We’re pushing into the home stretch here, and while our Kickstarter campaign is not exactly blowing up, we continue to get lots of love on the web.
Bikes and the City
http://bikesandthecity.blogspot.com/2012/08/cyberchisme.html
Bernalwood
http://bernalwood.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/kickstarting-bernal-heights-hillside-supper-club-basbasket-and-zip-cup/
Bike Provo
http://www.bikeprovo.org/barbasket-looks-bombastic/
…to name a few.
Lets keep spreading the word!
Our Kickstarter campaign is going strong! Check us out here. I don’t know what else to say but thank you to everyone who has supported this project so far. Its super exciting to be live. Go check it out!
Today I’ll skip the philosophical diversions. Here are some pix of the Barbasket. Don’t forget, our Kickstarter campaign goes live Thursday, July 12th!
Normal is not a particularly thrilling adjective. So why would I call my bike accessory company NRML? It started with these stools. They were designed by Naoto Fukasawa for Magis. The most notable thing about them, besides the gorgeous material, is that they look like stools. Unlike many in the design world, Naoto is a master of subtlety. He has a genius for making products that are what they want to be. Naoto designs objects that feel evolved and refined over centuries, not flash in the pan fads. In fact these stools were so subtle, that when they launched at the Milan Furniture Fair, many thought that they were just part of the booth. People used them as stools instead of worshiping them on a plinth. Turns out that that’s a good thing.
Naoto’s pal, and like-minded designer, Jasper Morrison came up with a name for things that are what they want to be. He calls them Supernormal. Supernormal things are unsensational looking things that perform sensationally. They are things that reveal their greatness more and more over time, rather than having awesome shelf appeal that withers with familiarity.
That’s what we’re shooting for. NRML is about designing products that feel like classics from an parallel universe. We want them to feel almost obvious, and yet ingenious. And the Barbasket is just the beginning. Stay tuned!
I’ve been thinking a lot about color lately. Should the fabric insert in the Barbasket try to match your bike? Should it contrast? Walking around a bike shop, you’d think that the answer to all our problems is to just make everything black.
There’s a color trend that seems super hot right now, and its the CMYK color palate. CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (black). They are process colors for printing, but over the last few years, they’ve been showing up everywhere. Fashion, Graphic and Product Design are teeming with process colors–usually along with a neutral gray. So here is a quick comp of what the Barbasket insert might look like in a CMYK and sometimes G palate. Let me know what you think!
What color palates do you want to see
Hi Everybody. Welcome to the NRML site. We are super excited about our upcoming Kickstarter launch. It has been a long road to get to this point. Here’s how it started out.
I’m a product designer, so I’m always looking at things and asking “why did they do it that way?” and, inevitably, “but what if we did this?” Every so-called improvement is really just a new set of compromises. But there are a few things that are so evolved that they feel almost perfect. The bicycle is one of those things. The classic diamond frame is a structural masterpiece as graceful and revolutionary as the Golden Gate Bridge or the Eiffel Tower. By the 1890s we had bikes that we would easily recognize as bikes today. By the 1930s, we’d invented, if not perfected, every system on the bicycle.
And yet, here we are in the twenty first century and there are still some aspects of the bike that lack the elegance and simplicity that the bicycle itself has enjoyed for going on 12 decades.
The basket is a perfect example. Sure we’ve had wire baskets, handlebar bags and front racks for a long time. But they all involve adding a bunch of clamps and stays and other hardware to your bike.
The Handbasket solves that problem by taking another approach. Instead of “how can we add a basket to a bike” it asks “how can we make a basket part of your bike.” The result is something beautiful. Or at least we hope you think its beautiful. Thanks for taking a look.
And stay tuned for our Kickstarter launch by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter!
