Fork in the road.

Ever start a project with one vision of your goal, take a left turn midway through, and end up with a completely different, but better end result?

This describes recent work with Daniel Yang, creating a carbon fiber fork for his bicycle brand Artefact.  Daniel builds beautiful steel and titanium bikes in California and wanted to develop a custom carbon fork to better match the classic lines of his metal frames than available off-the-shelf products.

Halfway through modeling what was shaping up to be an elegantly slender version of a contemporary carbon fork, Daniel mentioned how much he loves the dynamic aesthetic of flat angled crowns of metal forks from classic racing bikes.

It was easy enough to model some alternate crowns in Alias and soon we were on to a unique design for this material.  The final form both beautifully compliments the classic lines of Artefact frames and helps set this brand apart in the marketplace.

To me this is an excellent example of creativity, flexibility, and teamwork creating products that convey emotion alongside functionality.

Watch for the result coming to the next Artefact model - and thanks, Daniel, for rolling with the creative process to create something truly unique.  This is the best kind of design work!