Whenever I start a new project, I find myself daunted by the number of directions I could take, tangents I could explore and ideas I could follow particularly if the brief is very open. I’m not a particularly decisive person and the prospect of a blank page with no guidelines makes me sweat behind the knees a little. I’d prefer some pointers to focus me in a bit. I’m sure to some people, the concept of a free pass to do whatever you like, endless possibilities, is incredibly exciting and in contrast a very tightly controlled brief is the worst thing imaginable. So which is better – strict rules or creative freedom? To that end, I’m going to explore a very specific example and talk a lot about something I really like. (Yes, it’s bikes).
So let’s jump straight in. For a long time I’ve been closely following bicycle design and while over the past decade there have been huge steps forwards in materials, aerodynamics and resulting performance gains, bikes are still pretty much the same shape as they were 100 years ago; a frame made up of two triangle shapes, two wheels, a saddle, some handlebars and some other bits and pieces. It turns out the sport’s world governing body (the UCI) has strict rules on the acceptable shape and dimensions of bike frames that can be used in races. These rules are laid out in a very long and very dense document known as the ‘Lugano Charter’, which was first enforced in 2000 (As if this blog post wasn’t niche enough, I’ll just be looking at these rules in respect to road bikes). A number of reasons were given when the new rules were introduced – protecting riders from dangerous equipment (safety wasn’t always a huge concern for newly developed products and accidents did happen), “preventing the advent of a technocratic form of cycling”, and to refocus competition on human performance. All valid arguments that I actually agree with, but all of them focussed on cycling as a sport rather than the bicycle as an object. So let’s pretend designers didn’t actually have to follow any rules and could let their imagination run wild trying to make the bikes they designed as aerodynamic, stiff and lightweight as possible. What would happen?
Well luckily we don’t actually have to imagine. While road cycling and road bikes are governed by the strict UCI rules, triathlon as a sport has a different governing body and as such no rules apply to the design of triathlon specific bikes (yes, that’s an even smaller niche). Big industry names such as Specialized, Cervélo and Diamondback have both the inclination and, more importantly, the budget to design, build and sell triathlon specific bikes and they look mad. They are also very fast and have the wind tunnel data to back it up (don’t worry, we’ll steer clear of that today). These kind of radical new designs can only be achieved by starting with a blank slate which is exactly how some of these designs originated. One chief designer at Specialized even came up with designs for a bike that broke as many rules as possible (it has a windshield, different sized wheels and a smartphone dock). So while designing without predefined restrictions is an expensive and risky exercise, it can often lead to innovation in new areas.
An area of cycling where innovation was briefly allowed to flourish was in the even more obscure ‘Hour Record’. As the name suggests, this record is for the furthest distance ridden in an hour (always ridden alone and indoors on a velodrome, it is also considered either very gruelling or very boring) and descended into an aerodynamics arms race in the 1970s and again in the 1990s with riders trying cutting edge equipment and different riding positions to gain the smallest of advantages over their competitors. The record stands (or rather stood) at 56.375km set by Chris Boardman in 1996, which has yet to be surpassed, however a change of rules deemed this attempt illegal and is now known as the ‘best human effort’. The official record was set in 2014 at 54.526km, almost 2km less than the record set 18 years earlier. Aerodynamics has always played a huge part in cycling performance and the hour quantifies exactly the difference inventive and innovative ideas can make.
So why would strict rules be a good thing for design? Tight regulations have lead to smart and ingenious solutions to problems that could have been solved with a totally different design. In the cycling industry, some manufacturers have had to become experts in the behaviour of carbon fibre composites to realise their ideas without infringing any design constraints. In fact there are several instances of leading bike manufacturers partnering with motorsport companies such as McLaren and Aston Martin in order to share expertise in composite materials and aerodynamics (coincidentally F1 is another sport currently having a similar debate over equipment regulations). Design restrictions have driven innovation in areas that wouldn’t have otherwise been explored.
Another argument, oriented not at design progression but at design preservation is that the character and image of the bicycle are protected. The silhouette of a bicycle has remained largely the same for over 100 years and while the top tier of cycling as a sport are keen to eke out every single performance advantage possible they may have forgotten that the bicycle is still a form of transport that millions use every day. The bicycle is already a very diverse machine but one that the UCI are keen to protect from evolving beyond recognition (whether this is a good thing or not is a debate for another time). Design restrictions are often enforced to help to protect and preserve cultural and social landmarks.
I didn’t actually start writing this post with a rock solid standpoint on this with respect to cycling. Personally I’ve always preferred a few more guidelines to cling to, however I’ve managed to change my own mind during the course of writing this. I’m willing, if not entirely prepared, to push for a little more freedom and imagination in my work going forwards. While it’s interesting to explore these ideas, it’s worth remembering it’s unlikely I will be in the position of setting my own brief any time soon.
Finally, if you’ve made it this far, I’d like to apologise for talking so much about bikes. Thank you for indulging me and I assure you this won’t be the last time I write about cycling.
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