"Design" for design's sake
secretsam
Posts: 4,525
Was mulling over something the other day. You know those lemon squeezers that look like rocket ships? They're a (very pricey) "design classic".
Yet I saw a review of one once that said that functionally, it was cack and certainly worse than a £2.99 from Ikea, or wherever. So surely it's a piece of bad design - because it doesn't do it's job that well?
Bikes are full of great design - in engineering terms - but would any of them get the bearded world of "Design" excited?
Yet I saw a review of one once that said that functionally, it was cack and certainly worse than a £2.99 from Ikea, or wherever. So surely it's a piece of bad design - because it doesn't do it's job that well?
Bikes are full of great design - in engineering terms - but would any of them get the bearded world of "Design" excited?
It's just a hill. Get over it.
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I may have misunderstood. Most (all) non-Shimano or non-Campagnolo hubs are cack? I'm not sure Hope, Royce or Chris King would agree.
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Alessi says that the project was deliberately poking fun at the idea that form should follow function.
Not all designers are bearded...oh wait a minute
Bingo
And on another non-cycling front - stupid plugs with levers and rods instead of, say, a chain. Why???? :evil:
I'm going to put retro-fad quill stems in here. The threadless design is SO much better, allowing you to remove bars without taking all the stuff off, plus more secure, etc etc - so why are so many people fitting stupid quill stems from the 1980s?
It's just a hill. Get over it.
I'm 112% with you on sink plugs. We have several at home which are rod-operated or swivelly-doo-dah or similar. All are awful and have failed over the years in one way or another. Yet I can still buy any size of plug on a chain from an ironmonger for pennies. Grrrr....
But you are wrong about quill stems. They are not perfect and not wonderful, but they do what they do, they stay where they're put and they offer huge ranges of adjustability in the vertical plane with little effort.
There was once a time when stem length, bar profile and professional bike fitting were not really discussed - and people just rode bicycles. If you got terribly serious, you could change the stem, but many didn't bother. Now, there are lardbutts like me fascinating over whether to go for a 90mm or a 100mm stem... which is all rather sad and pointless. The quill stem is from that age and it fitted that time. I now have bicycles (road and MTB) with both quills and threadless - and I prefer the quill in every case. I quite like that the adjustment of the bat height does not involve re-tightening the head bearings. To each their own.
Among retro features that are not design classics, I never really understood why gear levers on 'racing' frames were always mounted on the downtube. One of the most liberating features of early MTB design for me was the facility to change gear out of the saddle. When that (Ergo and similar) came to road bikes, it changed almost everything overnight in terms of climbing and sudden sprints. I didn't mind the old levers until they were replaced... now they seem slightly silly when I ride a bicycle fitted with them.
Fair enough, and I take the point about head bearings - early on in my return to cycling (re-cycling???) I adjusted my stem but didn't lock down the head tube which could have been disastrous.
Yup, I'm that old as well!
Agreed - of all the innovations, this is right up there as the real design advance of the last 20 years, along with lighter, brighter, longer-lasting battery lights.
Oh, and tyres that aren't made of gossamer and so don't get a visit from the P-fairy every day.
It's just a hill. Get over it.
I was rather hoping we'd fall out over this thread - and now I agree with all the points you've made. Apart from the quill stems one.
Further to disappointing me about the possibility of descending into an online mega-spat, this thread is also in danger of turning into a discussion about ideas which were really rather good.
So... to get it back on track I'd like to nominate big, fat, low-profile tyres on spanky alloy wheels on every car from a Bentley down to a Kia shopper. Where is this getting us? The tyre manufacturers are happy, the wheel makers are happy. I like 90% profiles on steel wheels. Enough grip, enough feel and often no need for power steering. We have a 1961 roadster on the most ridiculously narrow tyres on steel wheels. It is a dream to drive, despite making only 60 bhp. Our modern MPV and econobox hatches have tyres from Absurdistan. 195/55 15 on a shopping hatchback anyone? On bloody alloys? And.... breathe..... Your medication is ready now Mr Debeli....
But really....
And those bicycle wheels with too much writing on them.
And Crank Bros Candy pedals. Terrible. I have four sets (various bikes) and will buy more... but they have only one set of bearings and they last about a couple of years. I love them. But they are poorly designed and poorly built and cost too much. I hate them. I love them too. Where is my medication?
I've got a Kia. With alloys. But I kind of agree with you
I've got some of those as well, I've read shorter books :roll:
It's just a hill. Get over it.
Not sure if this is relevant to the OP but in my mind all designs of anything has a part art and a part artifice. The point is at which end of the scale is it and how important you see one over the other. BTW I mean artifice as in simple engineering/design to perform an action. A chain could be pure artifice as is is not there to look good (art) so must be more artifice. If that makes sense.
With bikes you could say that hourglass stays are of a higher art content than pure artifice but if that is what you like then fair enough.
That Starcck lemon squeezer thing is more art than artifice but that is what it is meant to be. There are many cases of items not performing but looking good. Take a lot of cafe teapots, especially those chromed ones, that leak almost as much as they pour into your cup. Or hover mowers that cut the grass, mulch the grass up a bit then leaves them all over the lawn in clumps. They are a nice idea and look good when hovering over the lawn but really not a good finish to the lawn afterwards.
But did they become possible because someone invented compression-less outers for the cables or did they have to be invented because of the move to bar mounted shifters needed them?
Sort of chicken and egg scenario.
The agonizing over bike fit is one I'd not considered until it was pointed out, and it is ludicrous. An owner of a fishing tackle shop once told me that most of the stuff he sold wasn't there to catch fish, it was there to catch anglers.
A lot of what we buy, (and the ethos we buy into) is very much along these lines. We're sold performance as if it mattered. But what the hell does it matter my gears don't change in the prescribed fraction of a second? I'm never in a sprint and it's never really going to make a difference if I lose a few seconds on a ride because my saddle weighs more than the next blokes.
The older I get, the better I was.
I both agree and disagree!
Improved performance for all from a competitive point of view is relatively unimportant since everyone benefits approximately equally. However if we take the example of modern tyres, you can get a relatively light yet durable tyre thanks to kevlar and other modern materials, that make for more enjoyable, comfortable and uninterrupted riding. It's not just about a performance edge, it's about easier maintenance and more enjoyable cycling. The same goes for groupsets with 9, 10 and 11 speed cassettes as compared with 5, 6 or 7. This has made cycling on mountainous terrain more accessible and much more enjoyable for riders of a much bigger range of abilities than was once the case.
Weight savings are over-hyped in my view. Low weight is nice but it's not a game changer in any real way. Everyone gets similar benefits in competition and I don't think it makes a significant difference to enjoyment among casual riders.
I think you're taking things to an extreme now, MM. There's many times when I've been dropped off the back of a group, and no matter how hard I try, or what gear I choose, the gap keeps growing, and it's then I usually think to myself, "if only I had internal cabling, I know I'd still be in the bunch"
Similarly curves elsewhere on frames, such as top tubes, are not necessarily pointless. Straight lines use the least material and are by far the easiest solution when you're producing a structure from sections of straight material. However when you have the freedom to explore more complex shapes they become an additional tool to solve various problems. So, while I reckon a lot of the shaping of bikes is primarily stylistic I do not agree that curves are a bad thing.
As for saying curves look bad, well that's an argument for "Design for design's sake" I would think!
In many cases curves facilitate structural benefits and are a superior solution to straight lines. From an engineering design point of view curves are fantastically useful. From a manufacturing point of view they can be a pain. However they are not necessarily simply pointless fancy stuff.
It's not as easy as just putting the levers up on the bars. With frame/down-tube mounted levers, nothing moved and so the outers stayed the same length all the time. But when the gear changers went on the bars, the turns would make the cable lengths change with the older types of cable, and the indexing wouldn't work. Compression-less cables make the bar mounted stuff possible.
The older I get, the better I was.
The rate of change from 1990 to 2000 was one thing but the rate of change now is phenomenal to the extent that one could be forgiven for feeling pressured into buying/upgrading for fear of looking and acting in an outdated fashion. That's the pity. Where once, you would oogle at Deeside Cycles/Ron Kitchings Everything Cycling and think about the next affordable upgrade and the next one and so on, you are faced with machines that look so different and are faced with mesmerising choice.
Perhaps we are looking at design a bit wrong. Perhaps we shouldn't concentrate on the individual parts but the sum of the parts. My bike(s) are so radically different from anything I rode eons ago in terms of feel, comfort and reliability, which is difficult to compare in that sense. I would never go back in terms of technology but I would go back in terms of attitude. As it has been said before, we just used to go out and ride. There was also a different mentality to group riding that also seems to be lost.
The bike is a stunning thing despite the lack of long point lugs and chrome. We ride thoroughbreds now whereas before we rode scaffolding that only looked like what the pro's rode, sort of.
W - Wiggle Honda
"This year will be harder than last year. But that is good news; this year will be easier than next year." President of Abyssinia's annual address to the nation.
I now ride what the pros used to, and I lusted after.
I don't care about performance, or if anyone thinks it is old fashioned and out of date.
Anyone looking at me will also discount the hipster factor as well.
I am not sure. You have no chance.
Apols for being pedantic but we are talking about contemporary design.
Pics please
W - Wiggle Honda
"This year will be harder than last year. But that is good news; this year will be easier than next year." President of Abyssinia's annual address to the nation.
I am not sure. You have no chance.
I don't want every bike to be a flat top tube, double triangle thing, far from it, but I want to know time and money isn't wasted making a brand x bike look like a brand x bike if a better solution exists.
I mean no offense, but I think your view is confused. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me you 're saying you'd rather designs weren't restricted by the perceived need to include curves and such which only serve to look curvy and meet a fashion or branding image. While I agree it's best that designers don't feel constrained by visual expectations, I think you're wrong to suggest that curves themselves are part of the problem. The problem is marketing that's driven hugely by appearances. The fact that you "prefer the unfussy looking solution" demonstrates that you yourself are bought into a preconception of how a bike should look. This view is exactly what drives the behaviours you seem to disapprove of. i.e. trying to look like a Cannondale, Pinerello, etc.
Good engineering design is about compromises, both physical, financial and, I suppose, ideological. The freedom to use whatever shape and material best serves the designers goals is a very, very good thing. The availability of good FEA software allows visualisation of complex structural interactions and allows engineers to go through iterations of different shapes to see what should best meet the design brief without even building a physical frame. The ability to mould carbon in complex shapes without massive cost impacts as there would be with metals is massively freeing. There are technological and financial constraints and there will be plenty compromises to be made in terms of the priorities for the rider too. Should the bike's design prioritise comfort, rigdity, weight, durability, cost..... Why add in a constraint that bikes should be made with straight lines. This adds a constraint and limits the available solutions. It's bad engineering, In My Opinion.
However you've also said you don't want bike X trying to look like bike X if that's not the best solution, which I agree with, but that solution may be all curvy
P.S.
Apologies for the massively over-long and convoluted post! :oops:
It's not opposition to a particular aesthetic per se, it's aesthetics being over-prioritised. Show me why a curved top tube, or wavy forks works better and I'll be all for it. Take the Spesh Allez. A curved alloy TT so it aesthetically matches the Tarmac. Is it more rigid, lighter etc than a straight tube? The shape might not be a compromise in CF, but in 6061?
That's arguable. Modern cars all look very similar because manufacturers have placed them in wind tunnels and all come to the same aerodynamic conclusion. There may be an engineering optimum reached in frame design that will render bikes clone-ish [poor sentence construction, soz]. It would be interesting to see all the modern standard road frames in bare carbon, without the livery and decals just to compare them.
Each frame manufacturer is trying to achieve the same goal, more or less: Comfort, responsiveness and power transmission. I can see a huge convergence of styles and of course, there is always the current UCI rules which limit the parameters of design.
W - Wiggle Honda
"This year will be harder than last year. But that is good news; this year will be easier than next year." President of Abyssinia's annual address to the nation.
As an engineer I have often come via calculation to things that are already on the market. Maths don't change and so you are constrained to what the safety or other design limits will allow.
we are the proud, the few, Descendents.
Panama - finally putting a nail in the economic theory of the trickle down effect.