Headbadge Design 101

You have a beautiful bicycle in your stable (you know which one) that needs that last custom detail. It’s the bike you’ve labored over re-building; it’s the bike that helped you become car-free; it’s the bike that took you on your first tour or across your first race finish line. Now, it needs that perfect last component – a custom headbadge.

How do you choose a design?

Designing a custom headbadge can feel like a daunting process – particularly if drawing has never really been your thing. How do you know what image you want? How do you wade through the various thoughts that are swimming through your head? How do you convey this jumble of ideas and turn it into an actual thing?

Start here. Take a moment (or several days) to think about the following brainstorming questions. They’ll help you think about what sorts of images you like and what kind of feel you want. They’ll also help you explain your perfect headbadge to me, so that I can make it just right.

• Why do you love your bike? What traits does it have that make it special? What has it allowed you to do that make it second-to-none?
• Why do you want some bike bling? What does it mean to you to adhere a custom headbadge to your bike?
• What words or things do you have the most affinity with?
• What traits or hobbies do you want the world to know about you?
• How do you describe yourself to others? What adjectives would you use to describe your attitude about life or the way you want to be seen?
• If a stranger were to see your custom headbadge on your bike, what one word would they use to describe it?

Next, take a stroll through the picture library at Google Images. Search for your broad ideas and take note of the styles you see that you like. Copy the links and share them with me so that I can also see what you like.

• It’s easy to say that you want an “elephant”… but there are at least 1000 ways to interpret that idea. Looking around for examples to share with me – either by sending an actual image or by describing it – makes sure that we’re on the same page with your perfect design, while also saving you time in the long-run.

Finally, you can start thinking about some of the finer details:

• Badges need to be designed like a silhouette. We want your headbadge to remain a single piece of metal, so each design element must connect. (Imagine a work crew, painting new bike lanes. They lay down a stencil, spray paint over it, and an image of a cyclist appears on the ground. Your headbadge will be like that stencil, with your bike frame showing through like the cyclist image on the ground.)
• Designs can be either “positive” or “negative” – meaning that your tree headbadge can be either a solid metal tree (“positive”), or a silhouette of a tree cut out of a large rectangle (“negative”).
• Badges that are oriented vertically tend to fit better on a head tube.
• Your badge should fit roughly within a 2” x 2” space (depending on the design), unless you have an extra-large head tube.
• The more times I need to drill into the metal to cut out interior detail, the more complex it becomes for me to make your headbadge, and I will need to charge an additional $15 fee. If you want to avoid the extra charge, think about how to avoid too much interior detail.

And, because not all ink-and-paper designs translate well to metal, here are a few last thoughts to consider:

Whew. Can you now visualize your headbadge design? Can you begin to describe what you want it to look like? Are you ready for me to get to work?

If the answer is Yes, then send me what you’ve got!

If you’re still a bit shaky, no worries. You can check out the gallery of headbadges for a bit of inspiration, you can let it simmer in your head and come back to it, or you can email me and we can chat about it.

Let’s start creating! Use this lovely form below to tell me all the ideas you have, including what you want your headbadge to feel like, and link to as many external images as you want. Then hit Send. I’ll email when you I receive your request and start sketching up some designs. Within a few email exchanges, we should have it nailed down and ready to go!