2012 aiga minnesota Design Show

ARTCRANK is a poster show featuring art about bikes. We give artists the opportunity to show what cycling means to them through screen-printed posters. In our design collaboration with Trek Bicycle, our goal was to create a bike about art.

For Trek, this was a chance to step outside the boundaries of mass production and channel graphic design into a one of a kind bicycle. For ARTCRANK, it was an opportunity to make the leap from two dimensions to three and create a bike that visually expresses what it feels like to ride a bike.

Delivery of Work

The primary medium was the bike itself. We documented the creative processes from rough sketches through the finished product, posting teasers on our website and using Twitter to spread the word to our fans and followers around the world.

We also produced a video about the creative collaboration behind the bike, giving viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges of designing a bike and the process of bringing that design to life. This video and an accompanying story were released in tandem by ARTCRANK and Trek the day before our 2010 show in Denver, where we showed the bike to the public for the first time.

The Results

This collaboration — and the fusion of bicycles and design — has helped both Trek and ARTCRANK reach new audiences. Through the video, coverage in design and cycling blogs, and displays of the bike at ARTCRANK shows across the U.S., hundreds of thousands of people are getting to see both bikes and design in a new way.