Six pack holder by Walnut Studio.

Summer is upon us – have you decided who’s going to be in your bike gang yet? Well when you do, we’ve rounded up the best design innovations to help you decide what matching gear you’ll all be sporting. Full disclosure, my twin sister Annicka deserves credit for most of these, being the #1 cyclist in my life.

From Kanye’s bike rack to a 3D-printed frame, here are our top bike-related designs of 2011.

So, first off, I know the big question on everyone’s mind is “What’s Yeezy riding this summer?” Well, according to his Twitter, whatever it is it’s “awesome.” BikeSnobNYC wonders if, given his love of unnecessarily-gold-and-oak swag, he may be hanging it on a (perhaps) pretentious-but-pretty piece of design such as this Bike Shelf by Chris Brigham:

1) We’re falling on the side of “pretty,” despite what Bike Snob NYC says. The Bike Shelf by Chris Brigham comes in Ash or Oak - via Etsy.

2) Next up is Pit-in, a table designed to be placed outside of cafes or coffee stands for cyclists to “pit into.” STORE MUU design studio created the laminated wonder, which allows you to circumvent the annoyance of spending five minutes locking up your bike just to grab a coffee and get back onto it. Image via.

3) It’s the People that arguably come up with the best ad hoc design innovations – so obviously, Etsy yields some beauties. Here’s a six-pack holder for your bike by WalnutStudio. Just walk home after drinking them, ok?

4) The “Airbike,” released earlier this spring, is completely 3d-printed, speaking to the fabrication enthusiast in all of us. It’s designed by EADS, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, so, you know, you’ll be riding a bike built by aerospace engineers. This one’s made out of nylon (and is as strong as steel). Via.

5) The Japanese have it down cold when it comes to designing space-saving storage devices – check out this video of an automated bike shed that can store up to 6,000 bikes at once!

6) Knog‘s USB-powered bike lock (a prototype, admittedly) is pickproof and keyless. They continue their domination of the good-looking-bike-lock market – peep their other models over here, like the Kabana:

7) Fast.Co featured this product design from SCAD student Jaryn Miller, who conceptualized a set of bike handles that also function as a lock. Thus, when the lock is broken, the bike becomes un-rideable. This should prove effective most of the time, unless your bike gets stolen by one of those robbers that “just does it for the adrenaline rush, man.”

8) Knog (again) lights seem to be the accessory du jour, with Bike Snob NYC referring to them as “hipster cysts.” They’re also super functional and, most importantly, safe.

9) Bike Hanger, by MANIFESTO, proposes a rotating rack that would, with support from a building, store dozens of bikes with the square footage normally needed to store one.

10) Fast.Co also featured Michelin’s self-healing tires, which will come as a welcome respite for urban cyclists who CONSTANTLY have to repair flats on the glass-addled streets of inner-cities. The dimples in the bike’s vertical edges cause the tire to reorient the air pressure that normall makes a hole bigger. Instead, the natural air pressure squeezes the hole shut.

Bonus! Obviously, this top ten wouldn’t be complete with something from the Danes. Having mastered the art of the bicycle lifestyle long ago, they’ve now moved on to innovating the bike as “adspace.” We give you the sperm bike, a moving advertisement for a sperm bank in Copenhagen.

by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan

posted in New Projects top ten

tagged bikes, cycling, design, innovation, product design, top ten

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