And now for something completely different - frame graphics
 

(This isn't really C&V, but you're my peeps, and it is bike-related...)

I start a framebuilding class next week with Doug Fattic. After about three weeks of work, I should have a custom-made frame, which will also happen to have been built by me and hew to a vintage ethic (lugged steel construction, horizontal top tube, 8sp, downtube shifters - think of the final result as "retro-mod"). It will need paint or powder coat and graphics. I'm looking for ideas about the graphics.

I spent all of my professional life as a software engineer, most of it developing software in C or Python on Unix/Linux systems (I'm now retired). I don't really want the graphics to be terribly Python-specific, more generally sofware-related. Consequently, Python's "import this" statement is probably not going to work, especially with no context (python -c "import this"). I'll likely put my first name in lower case Courier font somewhere (skip), maybe as the basis of the downtube graphic or elsewhere. That's not too informative (other than its relationship to moi). I have a graphic artist in mind, so the space need not strictly be text either.

What short expression connotes software engineering? I've considered "n++" or "n+1", but not thought of anything more than that. You have probably heard of the Velominati Rules. I quote Rule #12:

I currently have six to ten, depending on how demanding you are that they be ready to ride with nothing more than adding air to the tires. This project, while definitely n+1 might well also be approaching s-1, especially if Ellen tallies up the individual costs. :) Maybe

as the downtube graphic with skip placed somewhere more unobtrusive (tail end of the top tube, perhaps)? Any ideas for the head tube?

If you'd like to play along, toss out some ideas. I'll consider anything as long as it's not NSFW.

If N+1>M then S-1

You lost me at Courier. :(

N3rd

I could be wrong but unless you have a lot of software buddies you ride with you might be trying to make an inside joke no one will understand, something like Fraser and Niles going to a grade school Halloween party dressed as The Bay of Pigs.

If I spent the time, money and effort to take a frame building class I’m pretty sure I’d put my name on it and perhaps my alter ego as the model name.

Random ideas;

“open sourced”

”Torvalds approved”

”kernel inspired”

A string of 1s and 0s

TT: “ 00.01♾️“

DT: “Enough”

ST:
“Skip”
”Made”

My comprehension ends there.
The n+1 T-shirts have too long an explanation.

+1 on the binary code idea. A string of ones and zeros in a slanted font would be cool. or, you know...0.

Here are some dimensions to help your design. Ideally with a 1 1/8” down tube, those letters are about 25 mm tall. This size depends on the font and how many letters long are used. And whether they are all upper case or lower case or both. It can be really helpful to make both the drive and non-drive side graphics as one unit. That makes placing them straight on the frame much easier – especially if you have center marks between the 2 names. Your chosen name will not be directly on the side but rather rotated up because you don’t look at the frame directly on its side but rather down at it. It should be obvious that those 2 names of your choosing are placed back to back and how much space is in between is determined by your font size.

One way to get the proportions right is by printing out this unit on paper from your PC and – after cutting the excess away – and wrapping it around a frame’s down tube to see if it looks right and then make adjustments. Using an already built up bicycle as a visual check can be helpful because you will be looking at the graphics from the same viewpoint.

The width of a head/seat tube decal should probably be around 1 5/8” as that is how much is visible when looking directly at it before it starts to disappear as it wraps around the sides.

The graphics for frames has evolved over the years as frame tubes have gotten larger allowing for bigger lettering and more interesting placement.For a classic frame, I usually place the DT letters exactly between the lever boss and top water bottle boss.

Here are some pictures of frames made by former students to give you some inspiration. Most use their own names but "Smitten" is a play on words from a student that lives in Michigan. If you don't get it, his seat tube badge he created from a sheet of stainless steel should give you a big hint.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...137f882fec.jpg
The owner of this frame is a Michigander

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...1e5406d52.jpeg
This student's 1st and last name started with a Y and used that letter when he carved his lugs and created his seat decal.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...2fc2ed6d2e.jpg
Traditional name placement

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...4f31d6a7a5.jpg
This student used more creative graphics. The down tube name "Red Beard" was his brand name placed on top of the DT and then he put his own name on the seat tube.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...724c913ad.jpeg
This student put used Vietnamese letters on one side and Roman letters on the other

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...41af93e08.jpeg
Trillium flowers were the inspiration for her lug design and paint scheme. She put her name on one side and mine on the other. Her seat lug decal is mine. She put "Trillium" in small letters on the chain stay.

Of course black with green font would go with out saying.

In addition to your main graphic, your name in binary in green font located on the top tube near the seat post would be subtle but not so inside that people wouldn't get it. Velocal or whoever would/could make you 01000010 01100001 01110011 01100101 00110010 (which would be Base2 in my case)

You could also put a Hexdecimal based frame serial number on the BB shell. Base2 converts to 42 61 73 65 32

You could go the whole hog & generate your own phone camera readable QR code sticker with any message you want. Place it under the clear coat in a protected location. Name, contact information, link to internet archive of build photos & other establishment of ownership items...Even your own personal webpage or Blog of retirement adventures. Something like this
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...85d2a275_b.jpgScan this. by Richard Mozzarella, on Flickr

TT: (small). “Fatticly Enough”
DT: “On 10nd Thought”

"PIzza in/Code out"

Here is a picture of another student frame made by a musician that is a high school band director. He wrestled with the same dilemma of putting his name or some representative of music as his primary brand name on his down tube. Eventually he put music names and symbols in various places. That is something you could do to. Put your name on the down tube and then engineering symbols on other tubes.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...c9f14f622.jpeg
A band director made this frame

These are beautiful!! The one with the Hellenic stays is particularly dreamy. Where is your shop?

I love the trillium lugged purple,white and green one. It is exquisite.

I'm in Niles, Michigan just above South Bend Indiana and Notre Dame University. I'm about 100 miles from Fort Wayne. I'll be one of the speakers at Auburn Classic Bicycle show in Auburn, Indiana the end of August. They will probably want me to talk about our bicycle project we've been doing in Ukraine for 22 years. I could do it on the history of American builders or how to judge the quality of frames or what it takes to paint a custom frame. I'm pretty sure my colleagues will take on those subjects.

I was a high school teacher when I went to learn how to build and paint frames in England in 1975. I've been teaching framebuilding classes since 1976. Carving lugs is a specialty. I make almost no effort to promote myself so I'm not that well known. People that really want to learn how to build frames find me. I get 2 types of students. Some want to learn the basics so they can make more. Others just want to be involved in making a true custom frame and let me do the hard parts. The most common backgrounds students have are either engineers like Skip or some kind of art related job or major hobby. Skip's future classmate is a graphic designer so I'm sure he will help him with his frame decals.

Agreed. I don't generally like fancy lugwork, but that is beautiful. I'd put money on the builder being an artist.

One reply to spew my various thoughts...

iab barfed (I think I heard him all the way in Evanston) when I indicated I'd use Courier for the font. I agree that's not the most elegant font. (Would you prefer Comic Sans?) It does have a strong tie-in to software development though. I first began programming as a grad student in the 1970s using IBM punch cards fed into a System/360. From there, I "graduated" to a Prime Computer of long-forgotten model. That was my first exposure to programming a time-shared computer using a terminal. I don't recall what those were, but... basically everything was 80 columns by 24 lines and the font was Courier. There are very good reasons to use monospace fonts when programming, especially for someone like me who uses Python day-to-day where indentation is syntactically meaningful.

Bianchigirll thought the joke would be lost on almost everyone. But of course. That's kind of the point. ;) Also, unfortunately I have no alter ego. I think RustyJames got the idea with his suggestions.

poprad & RustyJames I will give the binary string some thought. Hex would be more compact though.

Doug Fattic thanks for all the student examples. I can only pretend I will acheive anything like them. (For those who don't understand the Michigan reference — plenty of non-US peeps I suspect — here's a company capitalizing on the concept. Also, when two Michiganders meet for the first time, they will sometimes hold up their left hand, point to a spot (generally somewhere on their palm, the UP is rather sparsely populated) with their right index finger and say, "I'm from here."

base2 The QR code idea is great. Assuming Flickr is still around after I have parted ways with the frame (probably involuntarily), the new owner will be able to check out its background. That reminds me... I should probably identify the frame tubing make/properties on my Flickr album.

bamboobike4 Maybe "emFatticly enough?" ;) (Sorry for abusing your name, Doug. Feel free to make me sweep the shop floor after class.)

smontanaro, remember the KISS principle.

Keep it simple, stupid.

How about this:
"Custom build, paint, decals
.......by smontanaro"

That's two lines of small font on and aligned with the chain stays. Omit the dots (needed only for forum formating).

I'm not planning to getting carried away, just looking for ideas.

At what point, and in what form are the graphics applied? I'm refurbishing an early-60s-vintage Geminiani and am leaning toward some custom graphics.

You can play with different fonts at www.lettering.com. A forum member used them for some custom decals once, so I got familiar with their we based self design tool, just for kicks.

I forget the syntax to comment something out to ignore the comment, but you could preface your name with that on the chainstay in Courier, as one idea. For the rest, go nuts with the tool above.

Add a Linux penguin? :-)

Very nice frames, really like the "primo tempo".

The student frames I posted, the graphics were done with painting masks. Typically the lettering color was painted 1st and then covered with a mask and they the frame's primary color was painted 2nd. The process could be reversed depending on the paint we used. Some kinds of paint are thicker (especially candies) so whichever paint had the most thickness would be applied 1st and masked and the thinner paint would be applied 2nd. The Trillium paint job was very complex. It took as much work as it takes to make a simple frame.

When doing classic repaints, the process is completely different. I get dry transfer decals from SSSink that has a huge library of classic bicycle brands. These are typically applied after all the color paint work is done. Then multiple layers of clear are put over any of the decals methods and sanded smooth (probably in several stages) before the final clears are applied. A really nice wet paint job with multiple colors is a huge amount of work.

Sounds like the challenge would be creating those masks. What were they made from, and were they sliced out with a sharp blade? Was the actual painting done with some kind of airbrush? I think what I'd like to do is create one or two custom dry-transfer decals and/or create an actual metal head badge with my interpretation of the various Geminiani head-badge designs.