Orange Bicycles in New York
Orange Bicycles in New York: “
There’s a lot of things things one can take for granted living in New York as there’s so many new places to check out. One area that I try to visit once every six weeks is Central Park. My favourite area is the line that makes up the mall. Walking towards Central Park I passed Bryant Park which is in the midst of Fashion Week with all the tents on the grounds. Aside from all the fashion people floating around outside the gates the other thing that caught my eyes was a bright orange bike with the simple url dkny.com. The uptight designer in me wants to laugh it off as a silly stunt, though the civilian in me was still caught by the bright colors and I still remember the url today.
As a way to drive people to a fashion website I think this works really well - as part of a brand maybe not, but even what a brand ‘is’ is really being challenged. Part of recognizing a brand is through the ability of not seeing the logo yet recognize what the company is. Why the orange bicycle actually works is not b/c of the bright stunt but it’s part of an abstraction of the actual web campaign (I suspect print too) with the orange color and New York and has less to do with the actual logo. Fashion is all about emotion, not tight logo constraints. Isn’t it more fun to flaunt in the face of practicality? I’ve also seen the orange bike on 23rd and 9th ave and I imagine when I walk to work on Monday to SoHo I’ll see one or two pop up there. In the end I did end up visiting the site and appreciated the tie in - smart art direction as opposed to oppressive design police.
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(Via DesignNotes by Michael Surtees.)
