Latest Design Project
Brother Cycles
Brother Cycles are a small bike company based in London. They produce beautiful steel track frames with a vintage styling.
We met Will and James back in the Spring to discuss the possibility of working on a project together. As luck would have it, the brothers were in the middle of working on their second higher spec frame and wanted to do a special one-off bike to commemorate…the seed that would become Comrade was born.
Our brief was therefore to create a new brand for the collaboration that would include a jersey, poster and associated graphics for the frame.
Early discussions with Brother were that the design should have a retro feel, in keeping with the style of the frame, but with a more visually interesting twist. Our research took us to the 1980s track scene and a picture of Gintautas Umaras at the 1987 World Championships in Vienna (see images) and inspired by this and our love of the Constructivist Soviet propaganda posters we came up with the moniker “Comrade”.
Click the images to see how the project developed.
James Bowthorpe portraits by Charlie Birchmore.
The jersey, print and t-shirt are available in the Shop now.
Images
Comrade Propaganda Poster
A contemporary take on a Soviet propaganda poster. The more we researched, the more we could see a link between Communism, cycling, and the collaboration itself. The power, efficiency and speed of cyclists working together mirrored that of the Soviet workers and also the aims of the collaboration itself for Brother and Milltag. Hence the tagline: "Power through Unity".
