Sequestering Carbon

[No2]

• Concept : A full carbon fiber Suzuki Hayabusa preserving the factory styling elements
• Purpose or Goal : Replacing the black and gold bodywork with gloss and matte carbon fiber twill components without making it look overwhelming glossy, unsophisticated and tacky… eg.
  https://youtu.be/8j4IFA2bWuU?t=127
• Format : Meat space
• Audience : Audience is the motorcycling community.
• Your Experience Level : I don’t have particularly good taste or aesthetic intelligence as yet
• Nature of Job: Project.

I think one of the reasons 650ib’s full carbon Hayabusa looked so unsophisticated was because it was all gloss. So I need a bit of help from the hive mind to figure out which of the MotoComposite components should be matte and which should be gloss.

TLDR: I am intending to replace all of the gold components, the Front Air Intake and the Under Tank Panels (where your knees sit) with matte with rest of the outer panel replaced with gloss. What is the crit on that?

This is what we are staring with:

For more detail and jumping off points see below.

Consider the following:

• Functional highlighting: Aligning the texture of the parts with their practical purpose eg. the air intake, it reduces glare and helps to visually emphasize its function and with knee cutouts (under tank panels) a matte finish provides better grip.
• Visual dynamics: The interplay between matte and gloss elements to create a more engaging design that breaks up large glossy surfaces. While tone-on-tone variations can introduce sophistication without additional colors.
• Layering and depth: Generating a layering and depth effect so removing bulk from chassis members and high lighting exterior paneling.
• Composition balance: Balance the overall composition, preventing the design from becoming overwhelmingly glossy.

If the following components will be gloss which of the second (matte) list have I got wrong and why?

Gloss:
Font Fender (I already have the Magical Racing one)

Front tank cover

Front Cowling Sides

Windscreen Support

Inner Dash Panels

Knee Side Covers

Large Side Panels

Belly Pans

Rear Tail Panel

Tail Fairings

Seat Cowl

Should any of the following be gloss instead of matte? I am very undecided on the first two, I think they get progressively more obviously matte though.

Rear Subframe Covers (usually Gold on the Black and Gold bikes)

Undertail (usually Gold with the Black and Gold bikes)

Meter Panels

Instrument Surround

Instruments Cover

Front Air Intake

Inner Side Vents

Under Tank Panels

Front Cowl Cover (top of the front wheel well)

Under Inner Front Cowlings

V Panel

Center Tail Panel

Sprocket Cover

Chain Guard

[Just-B]

Graphic designers don’t usually get involved with industrial design. They’re related fields but not the same. Even so, I’ll share my opinions since I have a strong interest in industrial design and have been a longtime motorcycle rider.

I’ll give you an answer that probably challenges the premise of your question without answering it, but here goes.

Professional industrial designers typically make design decisions in this order: function > form > appearance.

In other words, functionality is paramount, and it involves things such as budget, practicality, engineering concerns, wind resistance, materials, safety, etc. Form is where aesthetic judgments about the shape, contours, and movement in a 3-dimensional shape come into play, but they’re always subordinate to function. Finally, surface appearance plays a role. For example, how is the form wrapped, gloss or matte finish, colors, textures, graphics, brushed, smooth, etc.

Most end-user vehicle owners who modify their cars and bikes focus on appearance while relegating function and form integrity to secondary considerations. They’re more concerned about decoration and ornamentation than design. Graphic designers constantly run into this problem with clients that focus on their aesthetic preferences instead of the functionality of the solutions.

How does this relate to your questions?

You’re focusing on surface appearance preferences and possibly heading toward decoration and ornamentation. There’s really nothing wrong with this since you’re the end user, and your main consideration is modifying the bike to look how you want it to look.

However, professional designers view these decisions differently. They focus more on the bigger picture while minimizing decorative add-ons.

For example, what’s the point of swapping out the cast aluminum stock wheels with carbon fiber? Carbon fiber wheels are extremely expensive. Do they offer advantages that offset the cost? Yes, they lighten the bike, but reducing the wheel weight ignores the suspension that was engineered with the stock wheels’ weight in mind. Busas are designed with ultra-high performance in mind. Would I trust carbon fiber at 180 mph or under the intense mechanical stresses of a race track? I’d be a little nervous about it.

Similarly, carbon fiber body panels have little practical advantage. They’re slightly lighter than plastic, but that’s a minimal advantage obtained through a high cost. All things considered, these modifications are more about personal preferences regarding looks and peer coolness than they are about making a better bike. I have similar concerns about other stock modifications.

You mentioned “sophistication,” but focusing on personal or peer group tastes says nothing about design sophistication. Instead, it’s simply about catering to one’s tastes and preferences.

Let’s take an average Harley rider. Do you like the customizations they make to their motorcycles? Probably not. I don’t. Even so, the look appeals to them as end users. It might not be a good design, but it makes them happy and impresses their friends who like the same sort of thing, which was their goal.

Of course, you’re not proposing modifications that will make your bike look like an overweight, two-wheeled, bad-boy wannabe clown cycle. Your modifications might appeal to both of us, but ultimately, it’s your decision and your bike. Matte or glossy? Whatever you like the best is the right choice for you.

Suzuki hired some of the best professional automotive designers and engineers in the business to design their high-end, high-performance Hayabusas. I wouldn’t be inclined to mess with their expertise and careful decisions, but that’s just me.

[No2]

Thanks @Just-B, you have given a good outline of the many traps people can fall into when modifying their machines. It is a valid and fair warning, essentially of ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’ and how fashion sometimes kills function.

This tension is well approached in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. To participate in philosophy (the love of knowledge) or preserve ones ignorance (and innocence). Most of us start our mechanical journeys on simple tasks and so must pass through this Dunning Kruger knowledge dilemma hopefully without crashing the plane into Mount Stupid.

In a community like this many of us are very good engineers in our own right and some of us look upon engineers with bafflement. When choosing our level of engagement with a machine we must understand that Engineering does not have the last say these days especially Design. It is usually Finance and Marketing and now more than ever ESG.

The ‘Directors Cut’ of the Gen 3 Busa would almost certainly have had Ohlins suspension, sifter front springs, Brembo master cylinders, Metzeler 01 SEs or Rosso Corsas for OEM tyre selection, carbon wheels and body work, and extensive use of titanium in place of steel, à la the BMW M1000RR Competition and other machines with price points 2x north of the Busa. This is what I am doing along with all of the massaging and tuning required for synergistic integration. With motorcycles more than most production machines the factory provides us with the canvas, it is up to us to finish the painting.

I personally have extensive experience of upgrading the functional aspects of my various race cars, bikes and aircraft but don’t really back myself, as yet, to avoid aesthetic faux pas, so interested in the matte / gloss juxtapositions and how to layer them in a visually interesting and compositionally balanced way.

I am thinking at this point to use matte where ever there is gold currently along with using matte to functionally highlight the Front Air Intakes and Under Tank Panels.

Am I on the right track?

[Just-B]

You seemingly understand the issues and pitfalls, so I won’t belabor those points.

I can give you my opinions on looks, but they’re only personal aesthetic preferences and ideas.

The gold/orange areas provide contrasting splashes of color, which I think the bike needs. However, you would destroy those subtle splashes of visual candy by making them black. I wouldn’t do it. You’d be left with a plain, black bike. I have an entirely black BMW 1200 RT. I like to ride it, but I’ve wished it had some strategically placed bits of color.

We have larger-sized woodpeckers in our neighborhood called Northern Flickers. They’re a rather dull-looking grayish-brown. They’re hardly noticeable at all — right up until they take off in flight. As soon as they launch, the underside of their wings becomes briefly visible. Those normally hidden wing feathers are an unexpectedly brilliant red and simply stunning. They’re fast birds, so there’s no time to see anything but a red streak darting through the air before they’re gone and out of sight. In other words, keep the flashes of color — they’re the visual frosting on the cake.

I’m unsure which bike parts would benefit from matte black. My gut feeling is the areas that visually recede or provide an opportunity for dramatic black-on-black contrast could have a matte finish. I might also be inclined to give the smaller pieces that aren’t really contributors to the bike’s good looks a matte treatment. Whatever the case, there needs to be some rhyme and reason to it instead of the decision being a willy-nilly and arbitrary scattering of one or the other.

Honestly, though, those are just my initial thoughts, and I’d only use them as a starting place. If it were me, I’d take a series of good photos from all angles and then use Photoshop to simulate a few matte finish combinations. This proof-of-concept mockup would help me test my ideas before making expensive commitments that might not achieve quite the effect I thought they would.

[No2]

Yes now we are talking, I was thinking of trying out Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha or maybe there is a video generator that does image to video? I notice that the factory actually did a semi gloss metalic on the gold highlights so other then the Undertail all of those items would lend them selves to a matte background from which the gloss can spring, the Rear Subframe Covers for example. Also the Inner Side Vents as with the Front Air Intake lend them selves to matte from a functional highlighting standpoint. Items like the Chain Guard and Sprocket Cover are an obvious candidate for matte textures. The Instruments Cover and Instrument Surround will need to be matte to reduce reflections on the windscreen while the Under Tank Panels should be matte to provide more grip for the legs. They also blend with the frame which has a matte texture to help reduce it’s visual bulk and allow the surrounding gloss items to pop.

The Meter Panels are an interesting one as they provide a contrasting matte lip on the factory bikes at the front edge of the handle bar cutouts in the fairing.

Do we think they should be matte in a carbon twill on carbon twill context or is there an argument for them to be gloss?

[PrintDriver]

Carbon fiber is such a hot item in vinyl car wraps that when I see it, all I think it is, is a cheap vinyl wrap, whether it is real or not. You can even get the vinyl in textured fabric, or smooth glossy finishes. {shrug}

[No2]

And around this tragedy the kernel of irony crystalizes. There are even real carbon frame / tank covers that folks add to make metal look lighter by adding weight. Carbon fiber (CF) is such a minefield of kitch and tack which is one of the reasons I am reaching across the room to a very different audience on this…to the table of folks that have good taste for a living as it is so easy to get wrong.

I am stuck with CF as currently there is nothing lighter on this side of unobtanium and light is the underlying functional mission. I am constrained by gloss or matte CF twill for the pallet this time too so how to make the most clever use of it is the postulation.

What do we think about the layering and functional rationales in my post prior? Particularly interested in the Meter Panels, my take is matte.

[Just-B]

@No2

Items like the Chain Guard and Sprocket Cover are an obvious candidate for matte textures.

Yes, I was thinking the same thing about those and similar parts that you want to recede and not draw attention to. At the same time, I wouldn’t necessarily limit the matte finish only to those areas. There seem to be nice opportunities to juxtapose large contiguous areas of matte finish with equally significant glossy areas, which could provide dramatic yet subtle contrasts that highlight the bike’s form and contours.

For example, the following red-outlined area on the bike might be all matte or all glossy, with the visually adjacent areas being the other. I’m not necessarily suggesting exactly what I’ve outlined (although it highlights a nice swooping shape, which seems appropriate for the bike). I’m primarily suggesting that you think in terms of creating juxtaposed shapes that reinforce the contours, planes, and lines that compose the bike’s three-dimensional form.

Of course, those shapes need to correspond to the individual panels and components, but most of them already do, anyway.

@No2

Carbon fiber (CF) is such a minefield of kitch and tack which is one of the reasons I am reaching across the room to a very different audience on this…

Yes! In my previous posts, I avoided using the word kitsch because most non-designers fail to appreciate its meaning, but it does get to the crux of one of the big pitfalls in this exercise.

Carbon fiber has its functional place in design and engineering due to its strength and light weight. It also looks really cool.

When carbon fiber is used primarily because of its looks, its use is decorative, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing when used sparingly. After all, when used with restraint and purpose, decoration can increase the bike’s visual appeal to a target audience, which one can argue is part of the bike’s function.

However, when imitation carbon fiber patterns are used, or carbon fiber is used gratuitously (such as your example of carbon fiber tank/frame covers), its use crosses well over the line into kitsch.

I’m not immune to the visual appeal of carbon fiber. Several years ago, I bought a carbon fiber helmet. I liked the looks, but I probably wouldn’t have bought it for looks alone. Luckily, it was a few ounces lighter than a regular helmet, so I had an excuse. Whether or not the carbon fiber added anything to the helmet’s safety, I don’t know — probably not, is my guess. I bought it anyway.

[No2]

Nicely done Bee, just when my engineers brain was getting comfortable with the compositional theory you have forced the frame away from problem solving into the creative solution space and tested my perspectives and courage… perfect.

This opens up the possibility to tune the sense of bulk. The Hayabusa, 隼, Peregrine falcon…

…is (somewhat) affectionately known in parts of the motorcycling world as the ‘Hire bus’ due to its inability or, some would argue, unwillingness to conceal it imposing bulk.

With the Large Side Panels and Belly Pan you have outlined gloss and 1 Inner Side Vents / 3 Under Tank Panels matte, moving the Knee Side Covers (2) to matte could potentially be quite sliming.

This also opens up the Front Tank Cover (actually airbox cover) and the Inner Dash Panels - highlighted below -

to matte textures. The tank it’s self (aft of the split) is gloss black so that might be a step too far however the tank is covered in grip matt so that is not off the table. If I give the mid section a diet I am now wondering what to do with the rear end.