The Miro Bike
June 12th, 2020
Shane Lee
This is a drawing from Joan Miro, a famous Spanish artist (1893–1983). He created this painting named “under the hail” in 1969, and 28 years later, in 1997, I got inspiration from his art in a book to create my graduated design work: Miro electric bicycle.
When I was in fourth grade at my university, I was trying to find inspirations for my graduate design work, there was no internet at that time, so I have to go to the library to check magazines and books for inspiration.
I accidentally bumped a book on the ground in a narrow space library, and it turned upsidedown and presented in front of my eye for Miro’s painting. I suddenly transfer the art into an electric bicycle design in my mind.
I like “Art” with “Irrational Creativity” for artwork, but I also like “Industrial Design” with “Rational Creativity” for mass production. When I combine irrational and rational creativity as one product, it becomes exciting and Intriguing.
The Miro bike has 3 working modes:
- Riding mode: it’s from the art for a person ride.
- Drag mode: The user can drag it if it’s not convenient to ride.
- Storage mode: make the bike with a smaller size for storage.
For sure, in the design project, I did market research, user insight finding, product ideations, sketches, renderings, and the human factor works. I spent 4~5 months to make it a 1:1 scale electric bicycle appearance model considering all working details and useful features when in the three different modes.
But the most extraordinary thing was the moment when the book fell to the ground, and I saw the Miro drawing, and it was transformed into my design inspiration, 23 years ago.
