Words & Water

I have been involved in cycling for over 20 years and during all that time I have never designed a water bottle, until now! Leave it to my genius frame building friend, Rob English, to set me off on a new design medium.

When we first started to think about creating a water bottle for English Cycles it seemed as though it would be a straightforward project: place a logo here, add some color there, no problem. Then we sat down to think about the design and thought, "How can we make something that will match the work Rob does?" It was clear from that first brainstorm session that we had to really put some thought into this design and push into new creative waters.

The following is a summary of the design process for the English Cycles water bottle (available here: http://www.englishcycles.com/bottles/) :

First off, the bottles had to have a clean, but detail-oriented look to them. As we thought of the bikes that have come out of the English shop, they all have a clean, but purposeful look to them. To match this style in the form of a water bottle, we decided to play with some wording..., well actually just one word, "English".

Rob's connection to the word English has always interested me. He is English, speaks English, his last name is English and his company is called English. How the hell could his company water bottles not have "English" written all over them?! With the design muse in place it was now time to make a design that both looked clean, yet had some complexity to it. Our solution was creating a custom pattern filled with "English" written in 20+ languages. Pair the pattern with a Union Jack and the overall design started to come together nicely.

Thank you Rob for giving us the chance to design my first water bottle. We are looking forward to the next one.