The New Blue

Before custom paint jobs and fancy color ways there were the days of the basic 3; black, red and blue. These three colors represented your big chance to individualize that new bike of yours. Needless to say, only having three options of paint to choose from was a real buzz kill to most but with the lack of choices came a love for these classic colors, especially red and blue. I was very happy when I was presented with the task of creating a classic blue FireFly with a nice touch of modernity, here is how I tackled the task.

First up, the blue! The soon to be new owner stated he wanted a bold, classic blue with a little attitude. So the search began, we could not go with a light blue since that would not match the classic blue bike vibe, too dark and we would be getting close to black so we went for the mild mannered middle blue, too classic you say? Not to worry, we can now proceed with creating a little attitude!

How does one give attitude to a color that is so popular? First step, find the perfect hue, you would be surprised just how many mid range blues there are in this World. Seriously, blue is such a popular color the options really did seem endless especially when most of the colors were being viewed on a computer screen so we had the extra task of anticipating what the color would look like coating the tubes of high end titanium. In the end we chose a blue slightly on the lighter side of the colors we were sorting through and decided a healthy amount of sparkle would give the paint just enough attitude to make for the perfect blue for an all blue bike…That is when we decided to push the design well beyond having a simple attitude, we wanted this bike to have something to say and something to loudly (all while staying prim and proper of course).

Stripes were the way to go on this bike, something classic and modern. Having played with various stripes while working on an English Cycle build I new exactly what to go for, single stripe made up of 2 colors. The colors of choice for the stripe? Classic red with a good touch of gold. The gold gave us a perfect color to tie the build into, allowing for tastefully matching components with the paint is always a good thing. The red added an extra level of interest to both the stripe and the overall paint scheme while paying homage to another classic bike color.

To finish the bike the seat mass, stem and bar were painted to match the frame. To kick the entire build up even another level a gold headset, cable set and best of all, a gold chain were used to bring everything together.