A Rider's Project

The impact was dramatic. Suddenly Steve's shop was on the national stage. Sales were on a scale he never thought he'd reach. Steve’s shop was twenty five hundred square feet of old linoleum and wood veneer filled with mechanical fantasies. It was more social club than retail motorcycle showroom and the area's finest performance service department. At the beginning of 1987 it was all exchanged for 6000 square feet of new commercial building. A second stage look was called for as an entire new line of performance equipment manufacturers had signed on for distribution. The focus now was packaging graphics for the vacuum sealed plastic peg board displays. This required an enhanced point of purchase identity. At right is the first concept sketch for the new lettering system. This was quickly followed by a new media-kit / catalogue.

    Now as part of this product roll out was the need to photograph all the component parts now coming on the market. This was the period when carbon fiber bits were coming on the market in mass for Ducati bikes. This was a demographic that could afford the new ultra light bits.
   Here the art director stepped into the role of photographer. This whole project was still being done as more or less a favor, and far below any normal project budget. Goes to show what one will do for free access to any bike they want.
    Steve was absorbing the cost of the move to the larger shop, so the project was still operating on a shoestring budget. Combine this with the need for a completely flexible shooting schedule do to product availability. So every ten days or so we would set up a studio right in the shop for a three day shoot. This is made clear by the shots chosen here. These were all shot with a Hasselblad, with full studio rental setup of seamless and lighting. The photos are presented here completely unaltered to give a feel for the time and equipment.
   And yes, I art directed, each shot was story boarded in layout, as well as acted as director of photography, lighting and staging. Steve and his mechanics stepped in as studio assistants as needed.

    This was just a bit of time-off fun that turned into an international project.

    As I wrote in the short story Jota Morning:
   “I had spent a few months restoring a Moto Laverda Jota. This thousand cc triple was a classic even then. Stump pulling torque that could take you well beyond 130 before you lowered your helmet visor.
   I had the time to do the restoration. I had just finished up the Egyptian project, handed the Red Sea resort contracts and USAID computer operation over to the principals, and found myself just doing what one does between major projects in Southern California. Almost nothing. I chose to spend the time at my friend’s Italian motorcycle dealership, drinking sodas, drinking beers, fiddling, riding. Generally separating myself
from the activities of my peers during the middle of the gogo eighties…”
    Steve had always had some lame ass, paid nothing for it, identity. It was a mishmash of Italian tank badge imagery that said nothing. Certainly didn’t say anything about him or the special place this shop held in the Southern California motorcycle culture. It was the only European bike shop between LA and San Diego. And even those shops were surprisingly irrelevant.
One day over a soda, or was it a beer, I suggested, “Steve, with this whole new line of Cagiva Ducati stuff coming out you should really step up and get ahead of the pack. Let’s give you a look and run some ads in Cycle News. Bring all of Southern California in here to buy the new bikes.”
   “Is this going to cost me something?” He winced from the thought that a dollar might get out of his pocket.
   “Oh shut up. Yes. It’s going to cost you something, but certainly not what it will be worth.”

Another aspect of this to be appreciated, is this was all done as a personal art project. I was the client essentially, as I acted as full representative for Steve's interests. Steve's knowledge of corporate strategy as expressed through the visual arts as I practiced it at that time was not on the same level of sophistication as his knowledge of how to create a stage 1 through 3 Ducati 888.
   While I was certainly doing this in Steve’s best interest I was not looking toward the compensation he could provide. My interests were global. During this time I was targeting the bigger players in the Moto market. Yes, I have used the Italian here. In conjunction with this project, I conducted a full analysis of the American Motorcycle market, current value and future trends, all in relation to the Italian manufacturers place in it. This was a time when the Japanese manufacturers were trying to evolve beyond the crappy handling bikes they had so long established their reputation upon. Their natural method, as in automobiles, was to copy the Italians and out produce them by a factor of 20, to understate it.
    As a result of this program for Steve, I was invited to Italy by the motorcycle division of the world’s largest brake company, Brembo, to solve their American market problem. Their problem was simple, their current national representative was selling 85k worth of product a year in a 20 million dollar market.
    The invitation extended was during the same week of the Esposizione Internationale Ciclo e Motoiclo in Milan. In preparation for the trip over the analysis composed was packaged for individual presentation. Meetings were arranged with the directors of all the major motorcycle companies. The message would be simple: “The Japanese are kicking your ass by shamelessly coping you.”
    So by spending a bit of time during my extended high-speed vacation at the Italian moto riders social club, and redefining it for a broader national market, I stepped back into my own world.
   Consulting work was done for Moto Guzzi, Moto Laverda, Bimota, Brembo Brakes Italia and Aprilia. We also worked closely with the California Air Resources Board, the US Department of Transportation, Peat Marwick Europe, Credito Italiano, The Veneto Regional Authorities and Techofin (the financial regional authorities of Trento).

There were a number of projects in play within this project. One was the restructure of North American distributorships and dealer networks relative to actual market potential. Another was development of high performance fueling systems that would meet current, and anticipate future, emissions standards globally. A third was utilizing the talent base at Moto Guzzi, which was still all in place at this time, to develop future product targets. Designs that were already in the pipeline, but unsupported by ownership. I personally wanted to reintroduce a Falcone for the Twenty First Century. A performance bike that would address entry level ridership and an aging rider demographic. A fourth focus was the restructure of Moto Laverda, reentering it into the market as a healthy, independent Marque. A fifth element in all of this was factory retooling at this time of machine tool advancement, while addressing the tradition of Italian journeyman machinist craftsmanship and the new generation of poly Technic school grads. Also the reestablishment of Aprilia in the North American market.
An interesting side bar to the second focus was to develop engines that addressed the emissions issue on the front end, rather than as an afterthought, which was then the method. To achieve this we arranged with the California Air Recourses Board to construct a CARB facility in Northern Italy that could be used by all the Marques, thus having the ability to sign bikes legal for the most stringent markets, like California, Switzerland and Singapore, prior to importation. The late Eighties was a time dramatic transformation, that we saw as essential to address all of these aspects of manufacture and marketing.

For all you digital age designers let me explain what your looking at before going into the story behind this project,.

Above is a four color film separation color key. This was the step where the printer took the product shot and separated it into the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black films, to make the four printing plates. You'll see this separation below with some of the films separated to fully appreciate this pre-press stage.

Below we have the production boards. This were the boards upon which the production artist applied the type from the type setters, and here on this board you will see a hand cut Rubylith film layer, laid on logo image which was hand drawn on the board.

Explanations will follow the images you will see.