New hairstyle, new vehicle, new problems, new hopes, and new sorts of joy.

I’ve recently bought a bike with my father, and he let me use it for the next two months, before i finish my school year in Nantes. It’s a big custom motorbike, not built for speed or performance, but I going to start thinking that this sort of bike is build for a lifestyle.

I can’t exceed 60mph (100km/h) because it’s only a 125cm3, but it’s really enough for kill me if I make a mistake… Yes, for sure, contrary to a car a motorbike don’t forgive you if don’t control it at 100%, and that’s the exciting part!

I really feel like a stranger now in Nantes, because I have the feeling to discover everything in this town, despite the fact that it’s going to be the third year that I’m living here. For the first time since a loooooong time, I take my time when I have to drive to somewhere. Just because I have to let my engine warm before starting, because I am more attentive at the traffic (Yes motorbike have no protection, and it really change everything when you are a driver!) I have the feeling to control more my life. I really understand what I do when I change a gear, and how my engine works. I have to wear different clothes to be more protected. And all the constraints that I am lead gives me the feeling to have the control. Paradoxical is not it?

Moreover these awesome facts for a beginner in motorbike driving like me, all of this lead me to an other statement, directly related with my future work : designer need to live the problem that he have to solve. I am not going to begin making big theories on designer’s job, because I have no necessary passing of time, and because I still have difficulty in expressing myself as well in French as in English (Sorry for the (possible) mistakes!). But I would only like to retranscribe what this change of lifestyle makes me feel on my work.

As a regular car driver, I was a bit bored to take my car to go somewhere, even if I take public transport to go to school. There is a lot of a things that I now have conscious with my motorbike, like some beautiful places or buildings, and some daily problems that a motorbike driver can have about which I would never have known if I had had no motocycle, that I’m started to think : » Hey, now that I got a motorbike, I have a lot of ideas for things to help the dailylife of a biker. And maybe it can be the solutions when you have to solve a problem for a type of people that you’re not, or a context which you are not used to. »

In fact, I have just discovered a thing which exists for a long time in journalism, and which others already exploit in design: the contextualisation.

I’m not sure about the name in english, but if you are used by Hunter S. Thompson’s Novels, you can call it the « Gonzo Design »

God bless the human capacity to be another one!