Bike Jersey Designs

One thing that bicycling has brought me is connections with other bikers across the country and even overseas, primarily through Twitter.  It started with opening a Twitter account to share my thoughts while on RAGBRAI last summer.  My connections to the "outside world" (or maybe its the insular world) of bicycling culture came when I started being followed by @thebeerrunner, who is from Milwaukee and who also rode RAGBRAI XXXVIII.  (Twitter almost sounds like cyber-stalking, doesn't it?)  Of course, with a handle like that, I had to follow him back.  Through The Beer Runner, I started following @bikerly (Jim), @lovingthebike (Darryl), and @egggman (Mike), as well as the folks at @grouchosports. (More on Groucho in a moment.)

Turns out that Jim, Mike and Darryl have conspired to create #bikeschool - originally conceived as a way to tag life lessons learned while riding a bike.  It evolved into a weekly tweetchat on Thursday evenings. (History here.) 

Through #bikeschool, I've met many more bike enthusiasts.  People from a variety of walks of life who approach riding in an infinite number of ways.  It's been great cyber-meeting some great people.

One day, tweeting with Jim, we were talking about a #bikeschool RAGBRAI team, when I sarcastically said something like "only if there's a jersey in it!"  And an idea was born.  So, I began sketching.  I sent my idea to Jim and he liked it.  Ironically, at the same time the three (Jim, Mike & Darryl) were talking amongst themselves about creating a jersey and/or having a design contest.  In fact, Mike had posted his own draft of a design for the jersey.  Turns out, that they liked my drawing.  I revised my sketch to incorporate some of Mike's ideas and we collaborated to come up with a near final design.  A twitter friend Heather (@shitcyclistsays) suggested adding more green - a great idea that we added.  Nice touch!  Now, it's moving forward with production.

Which is where Groucho Sports comes in.  Groucho is a new sports apparel company in the Twin Cities with a target clientelle of runners, cyclists, and triathletes.  The drawings are currently with the Groucho designer and being prepared for production.  I can't wait to see the sample when it's ready.  Groucho is going to contribute a portion of all sales to non-profits.

Here are the sketches for the #bikeschool jersey:

The other jersey is for a year old biking website, lovingthebike.com, that Darryl has developed.  We've worked through a few different concepts and this is what we came up with.  It's really cool.

Darryl is working on securing sponsors to be placed on the back pockets.  These sketches have just been sent to Groucho for the designer to work on and prepare a sample before going to production.  Darryl and I are both excited about this design.

The final products will probably be a little different than what's shown above.  But it's still cool to know that my concepts will be made and sold.  Kinda fun to express the creativity.