Office and career politics in it's many guises. It's a ladder. The new wife is pregnant. Oh the pressure. Your assignment: design the tail light and soon to be discarded extender thingy. You're going to design the snot out of that aren't you. You have no choice. This is no time for less is more. Is it any wonder motorcycles look the way they do?
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Politics of motorcycle design
- Thread starter inreb
- Start date
Riceburner
Well-known member
with what?????
sometimes things are so out of whack, there is no balance possible....
I feel like you're driving at something. Can you give some examples of "motorcycles"?
I revisited my soiled but much coveted March 2004 Cycle Canada which contains the Michael Uhlarik introduction by Bruce Reeve. Following his condensed career trajectory I have to conclude that designing a light, head or tail, cannot be left to pragmatism alone. Focus groups wouldn't allow that, much less the ego.
ps I can not give examples of motorcycles at this time as too much too list
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Rumor has it that they're melted down and turned into these:
I always new I couldn't trust this "recycling" hype
Motorcycle design is an esoteric proposition, function before form? The Black prince was too much too soon, enclosed bodies made for 50's spaceage style but it didnt look like a bike, I like to see whirling mechanical bits. The triumph headlamps have an era of night blindness, my tiger is a very dark ride at night.
Adventure bikes are an adventure to get off the center stand, awesome clearance with most never leaving pavement. The Quebec chopper builders have it easiest, just style a bike thats totally unridable and drips chrome and has a medival paintjob and your good to go.
Adventure bikes are an adventure to get off the center stand, awesome clearance with most never leaving pavement. The Quebec chopper builders have it easiest, just style a bike thats totally unridable and drips chrome and has a medival paintjob and your good to go.
Kri$han
Well-known member
Maybe you can give more specific examples, other than the rear fender/plate mount... in the realm of automotive design, much emphasis/energy/manhours are spent on two major areas: marketable improvements & technology, and outright industrial design.
Marketable improvements and technology is obvious: bike is lighter, faster, more efficient, less costly, haz moar gadgets, etc. etc. They NEED to build that aspect into their designs to sell moar bikez.
Outright industrial design is very costly; surfacing industrial designers create concepts that are then passed to engineers to "make the design work", all while not negatively impacting the features mentioned above. They're also not stupid; they know most people will discard a fender, rather than change the tank, so they'll spend more time designing the tank, rather than the fender.
TLDR: The fender is an after-thought, so "doui" they're not gonna throw high paid resources at it during development... they'll let the industrial design co-op student do it.
Considering that rear SS mudguards get hacked off on a regular basis, those extensions must be causing severe anxiety. Maybe there are motorcycles parked at therapist offices after all, out of sight at the back. Or, to paraphrase Sigmund, sometimes a fender is just a fender.
Okay, if I have perceived the discourse correctly...
You've finalized the design for your hot new sportscycle, targeted at milleniboomers and you tried to make it look good but different, with a seperate compartment for kids/dogs in the back. You even purposely designed the rear plate extender to easily be removed (I am actually thankful for this, BTW... no more of that hacksaw nonsense) and for the turn signals to be reusable on the plate hanger that people are going to actually use. However, you're still shipping your bike with that extender on there. More than that, your fancy new motorcycle is going to be photographed with it on there in the press packages & motorcycle reviews. You can't just put a full length fender on there - what is this, 1985? So your spartan-but-rigid plastic plate extender has some engineering time in it, you might as well spend a little extra time and make it add something to the styling. It might be like anchovies on pizza, but it's something.
You've finalized the design for your hot new sportscycle, targeted at milleniboomers and you tried to make it look good but different, with a seperate compartment for kids/dogs in the back. You even purposely designed the rear plate extender to easily be removed (I am actually thankful for this, BTW... no more of that hacksaw nonsense) and for the turn signals to be reusable on the plate hanger that people are going to actually use. However, you're still shipping your bike with that extender on there. More than that, your fancy new motorcycle is going to be photographed with it on there in the press packages & motorcycle reviews. You can't just put a full length fender on there - what is this, 1985? So your spartan-but-rigid plastic plate extender has some engineering time in it, you might as well spend a little extra time and make it add something to the styling. It might be like anchovies on pizza, but it's something.
the anxiety is real...
That's some strange looking man-tackle. Forget the therapist--head to a urologist right away.
It's an unspoken; the castration is inevitable.. MV, for one, accepts fate. Heck they don't even bother with mirrors.
Maybe my original post will make more sense after this. Let's say you're that design co-op student. You know how much effort it took to get to where you are now. Additionally, you've beaten out other candidates and need to beat more to secure a full time gig after graduation. You have financial aspirations and you wouldn't mind making a name for yourself in the industry. With that motivation in place, you are charged with designing a small visible piece for the bike. What are you going to do? You're going to knock it out of the park is what you're going to do. This is how I envision bikes like the B King get made. A muffler can't be a round tube anymore, we're way beyond that. That's why I used the word politics in the title. We all understand office and work politics. It affects how you do your work and how you will be judged.
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Kri$han
Well-known member
Totally agree with you here.
But as the student (with your limited design experience), you bring to the table your brand new amazing design, and a senior level designer tells you that it'll cost more $$ to proof then put into production than the front fairings... back to the drawing-board to re-design something cheaper. Again; manufacturers must *always* place their time and efforts on more important aspects of the vehicle than unimportant aspects. Its called prioritizing; because design time, concept and production costs are not infinte, and are actually seen as "sunken costs".
Engineering time falls into this category, too. Although design and engineering costs can be value-added, at the end of the day the costs associated with this time are all overhead for manufacturers (so they outsource or minimize them as much as possible without falling behind their competitors). I wish I could tell you how many times great design ideas are shelved because they will add too much cost to the project(s).
Is a great design idea, a great design idea if it adds to much cost to a project or is great design reality based and possibly reduces costs?
Its the existential question, when does design eclipse the possibility of production and when does the damn the torpedos kick in and it gets built because its just to awesome to not build?
I'll agree a lot of design ideas just go on a shelf because they are too expensive. I see it all the time in the store fixturing and interiors market I'm involved in right now, designer 'A' makes a gorgeous restaurant interior, no idea how to hang it and the costs are unrecoverable.
Its the existential question, when does design eclipse the possibility of production and when does the damn the torpedos kick in and it gets built because its just to awesome to not build?
I'll agree a lot of design ideas just go on a shelf because they are too expensive. I see it all the time in the store fixturing and interiors market I'm involved in right now, designer 'A' makes a gorgeous restaurant interior, no idea how to hang it and the costs are unrecoverable.
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