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Designer digitally renders bicycles drawn from memoryVelocipedia by Gianluca Gimini

Designer digitally renders bicycles drawn from memory

Gianluca Gimini has digitally rendered bicycles drawn from memory in his Velocipedia project - with strange and beautiful results
by Laura Laker
Sun, Apr 10, 2016 15:19
9

Draw a bicycle. Without looking.

It’s much harder than you’d think, and one designer has rendered just some of the contraptions people came up with when asked to draw a bike from memory, with interesting results.

Bologna-based Gianluca Gimini asked family, friends and strangers to draw a men’s bicycle by heart, with varying success. As Design Boom points out, this technique is used by psychologists as an example of where we think we know something but its reproduction varies wildly from the object’s reality.

Gimini then took some of the hundreds of results and rendered some lifelike digital mockups of the machines in a collection he calls ‘Velocipedia’.

Video: how do bikes stay up?

“There is an incredible diversity of new typologies emerging from these crowd-sourced and technically error-driven drawings," he says.

"A single designer could not invent so many new bike designs in 100 lifetimes and this is why  I look at this collection in such awe.”

According to Gimini 90% of the bikes with front wheel drive were drawn by women, where men tended to overcomplicate the frame once they realised they had gone wrong.

Of course most of these bicycles would never survive in the wild (i.e. you couldn't ride them, or they'd feel weird to ride, or break) – not least the one with front wheel drive – but they are pleasing-slash-amusing to look at.

You can see some of the strange and beautiful machines here. How did yours turn out?

Velocipedia
Laura Laker

Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.

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9 comments

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jollygoodvelo | 8 years ago
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An enjoyable read, thanks 4

 

Some people clearly have no drawing skill and/or pay no attention to the world around them - I did this a while back and, predictably, drew something that looked a bit like a Giant Defy - compact frame, seat post and head tube/fork parallel, BB slightly lower than rear axle.

 

I wonder whether a similar project could be done using the cycles drawn on roads to indicate cycle lanes/routes...

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dave atkinson replied to jollygoodvelo | 8 years ago
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Gizmo_ wrote:

An enjoyable read, thanks 4

 

Some people clearly have no drawing skill and/or pay no attention to the world around them - I did this a while back and, predictably, drew something that looked a bit like a Giant Defy - compact frame, seat post and head tube/fork parallel, BB slightly lower than rear axle.

 

I wonder whether a similar project could be done using the cycles drawn on roads to indicate cycle lanes/routes...

There was a great little book called Code 1057

http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/2011/10/code-1057.html

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Guanajuato | 8 years ago
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Some interesting ideas.  I wonder if the same people were asked to draw cars, how many would also be vaguely outlandish.  All they've tended to do is miss some details.

Love the two-wheel drive mudplugger. Not sure how it would work though.

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DaveE128 replied to Guanajuato | 8 years ago
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Guanajuato wrote:

All they've tended to do is miss some details.

I'd dispute that!! It's not just that details are missing. Things are fundamentally wrong. It suggests to me that you might not be accurately perceiving many of the errors in the same way that the people who drew them weren't.

It's an interesting question whether the issue is that people simply can't draw (actually this is more likely that they are just poor at observing and / or remembering) and this may be particularly apparent because of a bicycle's geometric complexity relative to a car, or whether people are actually particularly ignorant about what bicycles are like because they have paid them no attention.

What I think would be most interesting is whether people think that can do a reasonable job of drawing a bicycle before they attempt it.

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jollygoodvelo replied to DaveE128 | 8 years ago
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DaveE128 wrote:

It's an interesting question whether the issue is that people simply can't draw (actually this is more likely that they are just poor at observing and / or remembering) and this may be particularly apparent because of a bicycle's geometric complexity relative to a car, or whether people are actually particularly ignorant about what bicycles are like because they have paid them no attention. What I think would be most interesting is whether people think that can do a reasonable job of drawing a bicycle before they attempt it.

The same people would be likely to draw a car with similar problems - wheels located underneath the body, etc.

.........._______
____/_______\
|____________|
...(_)...........(_)...

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Mungecrundle | 8 years ago
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Just glorious. Some of the elements in these renderings are really thought provoking.

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Accessibility f... | 8 years ago
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The green bike with the mudguards and square frame is really cool.  If the front mudguard could follow the wheel, I'd definitely want one of those 1  Although I think the drivetrain would need to be reviewed...

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DaveE128 | 8 years ago
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That's quality! Gave me some good chuckles 1

It's true that most people are unable to draw an accurate sketch of a bicycle from memory.

I wonder if there is any similarity to how non-cycling drivers think they know how cyclists ought to cycle... I wonder whether this phenomena could somehow be used as an educational tool to show non-cycling drivers that they know far less about bikes and cycling than they think they do. I'm suspect a lot of bad driving and aggression around cyclists is partly due to ignorance and drivers dishing out punishment for people failing to cycle how they think they ought.

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mike the bike | 8 years ago
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What's wrong with that?  I like a comfy bike.

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