Saturday, 22 October 2011

Hi all,
Choosing the colour scheme for my bicycle handlebar is a bit of a hard one for me. Because I'm only choosing to design the handlebars and not the entire bicycle itself, I'm struggling with going for colours, that when put on the body of the bike, don't appear to mismatched. 

Over the week, I've been looking at colour schemes that can be matched to any coloured bike body. It was easy to decide to just slap on black to the entire handlebar, but it seemed too boring. At the moment I'm looking into having black or a dark grey as the main colour of the handlebars, and having subtly coloured (perhaps white and lime green) regions to highlight little features, such as rubber grips, indents on the dial and key shapes. As white is rather neutral it seems to go well with most colours (similar to the image above), while the small applications of lime green will draw in the attention, but not appear to overwhelming in comparison to the bike body. Lime green was also chosen over other colours because of tendency of human eye to recognize more shades of green than any other color, in keeping with the 'visibility' theme.

Also, I'm wondering if there is a way to paint rubber. The guy at Clark Rubber said it wasn't possible to paint rubber because the paint would crack as soon as the rubber was moved. Please let me know, thanks :).

--
Cynthia

1 comment:

  1. Due to the fact that your device needs to compliment a range of unknown colours I feel as though a medium grey would be a wise choice, especially done with a metallic finish to create aesthetic interest. I say this because grey is found to be the most complimentary colour to any other hue - this is the reason why commercial art galleries often have polished concrete flooring. Furthermore, if the person's bike is of a light shade black will be too overpowering. In addition, I would avoid at all costs choosing white for the rubber grips of the handlebars. Whilst this shade looks quite effective as details in the paint of the bar and the gear interface it is absolutely horrible on the grips due to its susceptibility to stain - There is nothing more displeasing than discoloured brown hand grips.

    Good luck,

    Ashlee Shepherd.

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