5 Tips to avoid a Horrible Cafe Racer

are you an industrial designer do you have any experience I'm designing a cafe racer no excellent this means you have a big chance of making a mess on a cafe racer project but don't worry because you are at the right place some time ago I was exactly in the same situation as most of you may be today and this leads us to a good question how was it possible that I designed these lines starting from this motorcycle aesthetically it really looks like professional work the problem is I am not exactly a professional and I am NOT a genius either and this is what I am going to explain during the next minutes welcome to race a TV [Music] if you don't know anything about this Honda CX you just need to click here but if you saw it already I know you want some more of this yes it still sounds like a v8 engine I never get tired of hearing it going back to subject everything I am going to say from now on is from an aesthetics perspective so here is my first tip make a drawing of the project you may even start by drawing it on paper but for most people I think using Photoshop is probably the best tool to get the best result as you are seeing now I also started my project with only some basic knowledge but after using it for a while it is easy to improve our skills especially because there are a lot of tutorial videos on YouTube teaching about the most important tools as you see I made a lot of mistakes during the early renderings the proportions are wrong the general stance looks strange and the color and materials combination doesn't work as it should but all of this is a part of the design process trial and error is always an excellent method when we don't have experience in what we are doing and this is why Photoshop drawing is such an important tool for any project [Music] and here is the second tip avoid quick decisions never make a decision on a hurry think about all the possibilities for every individual choice and try to see how it fits on the project try also to avoid obvious choices to give you an example initially I had chosen brown hand grips just to match with the seat color but when I saw the clip ons with almost everything mounted I discovered that black hand grips would look much better due to these dark details the third tip is to think globally every individual choice should have an overall purpose what I mean is that each choice should have an intention in the global appearance of the project for instance when you find a beautiful headlamp it doesn't mean that it will fit properly on your motorcycle like I said on the first tip Photoshop is an excellent tool to check it another example are my Honda's custom side covers this option is also very nice but considering I wanted the bike to look the more retro and classic as possible I decided that this side cover made more sense because it is something that could exist in the 60s therefore the perfect choice for the global purpose of the project this is what thinking globally means and here is the hardest tip for someone to accept be prepared to fail don't be afraid of starting all over again or making radical changes on what was already well designed every time you fail during the project design it only means that you found a way that won't work this is especially true when we deal with difficult motorcycles just like the Honda Z X when I started the building process with my mechanic soon we discovered that raising the height of the fuel tank was not working as I had initially thought that day I was very disappointed but when I found the solution I felt very glad for the failure because the fuel tank ended up much better than before would I ever reach these lines that I not failed previously I am sure I wouldn't this is why someone said one day that failure is the way to success believe me this is so true but if failure is so easy to recognize how do we know when we hit the right choices [Music] this leads us to the last and most important tip of all [Music] look for an honest opinion I know three ways of doing it if you believe you've got a good project already try to show it to some friends but don't tell them that you designed it if most people say that the seat is awful or look strange that's because it is probably true and this is when you should reevaluate some choices on the project another method to know if you are on the right path is being honest with yourself don't let your ego or pride interfere try to look at your design from an honest and realistic view for example this rendering does not look bad at all but when we erase the nice background of the image the true lines of the motorcycle show us a different story this is when we start being truly honest with our work and don't let the apparent beauty of the renderings blind us from the real beauty we seek and finally the last and most significant way let the time factor be your best consultant on the final choices what separates an amateur from a professional is the fact that a professional always reaches the right shape faster therefore you will need a lot of time for every decision this means that every time you make a change on your project try to look at it a few days later this was my main method to be sure that I was on the right direction for instance I remember thinking that this rendering was perfect when I finished it after waiting several days I finally saw that it wasn't as perfect as I thought I cannot say how many times this happened to me during this project but I can assure you this happened a lot of times so far these 5 tips my only secret about this project absolutely not these tips are only the most recent lessons that I've learned during the last two years if you want to know more tips I use during this build try to watch some of my old videos about this subject I left several links below on the video description I can guarantee that most of the things that I tried to teach during the last 5 years on this channel are entirely true and work perfectly when everything is done correctly thank you for watching race the TV and as always I hope to see you next week [Music]

Channel: RACER TV

Views: 161,016

Rating: 4.8769231 out of 5

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Id: lch8_yxeSE0

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 16 2018