The photo the illustration is based on was taken about fifteen years ago. Just a quick snapshot of a bike locked to a post, but it's still one of my favourite images. I'm into bikes, which is probably why I noticed it but not why I remembered it. In the millisecond it took my brain to register what I was looking at, it had stopped being a bicycle and become a story: someone with a need, some obvious constraints and a get-er-done attitude… doing it, as Mr. Sinatra would say, "My way."

This used to be two kids' bikes, frankensteined into something else entirely by somebody who went all in. The first decision was this thing needed to be a chopper. How you get there without bolting on something factory-made is another matter. What I can see is three sets of forks, semi-engineered but mostly jammed together through sheer determination and brute force. Add a chunky, powerful-looking battery that I first mistook for a motor. A motor would have fit perfectly with the persona I'd already invented for this person - loud, proud and the need for speed, real or imagined. Its actual job was more prosaic: powering speakers (wired in, no enclosures) and lights, because hell, safety first. And the pièce de résistance - big, beautiful, completely non-functional dual chrome exhausts, acquired from god knows where. Because coolness counts.

Objects tell you things and I wish I knew who built this one, but in a way I don't need to because it screams resourceful, fearless and unapologetic. I still can't understand how the forks don’t collapse just by looking at them, but somebody figured it out. Whatever the constraints were, they didn't shut the project down. They shaped it.

Which brings me to the "who." Somebody had a clear idea of what they wanted to build and, more importantly, who it was for. Here, the who was the maker. The machine had to get them around, reflect them, make them happy and announce their arrival from a block away. If anyone else wanted to come along for the ride… sure, why not? For a brand, we all know the audience usually isn't the founder but the underlying idea is the same. Know thy audience, which gives us permission to make real decisions versus saying the brand is for everyone. In other words for no-one. The more general we get, the more we dial out anything specific enough for somebody to actually care about. Knowing who it's for, and suddenly there’s room to decide things like: Modified forks of questionable safety? Check. Big sound? Check. Big lights? Check. Chrome? "Yup, this baby needs more chrome."

The finished build reads like joy and FU in the same breath. But there's also care, which is quite different from carefulness. Whoever built this cared deeply about the thing and a lot less about what anyone else thought of it. That's why it feels so considered, because it’s measured against its own priorities, not anyone else's. We might dislike it or refuse to ride it (probably wise) but it’s definitely not generic or average.

And it looks like it wasn't easy. Pulled together with limited resources, every piece had to be sourced, modified, assembled and tested. Then probably rejigged and tested again. Not much glamour but lots of process, and in that process you can see the difference between shortcuts and workarounds. Shortcuts avoid something that still has to be dealt with while workarounds find another way. This machine is almost nothing but workarounds. No workshops or stakeholder interviews but there's strategy everywhere you look, and when you add it up, the maker becomes visible. That's authorship. It’s not only style and putting your name on something, which this machine has plenty of, but knowing who the work is for, making the decisions, doing the work and taking responsibility for the result.

We've all seen brands designed to offend no one. Strategy is competent, design is competent, nobody loses their job, and nobody remembers the brand. Competence is table stakes. Best practices have their place as well. Like accessibility, security and compliance for instance, but creative is different. I've seen best practices used as cover for fear: of being different, of somebody not liking something or of lost investment if the project fails. Understandable, but too much best practice and nothing stands out either. That doesn't mean bolting three sets of forks onto a project for the sake of being different. That's something arbitrary masquerading as creativity. The point is knowing exactly what deserves to be different, and why.

After a bit of time in the trenches, I'm convinced judgment is most of the job. Where judgement comes from is for another time but the work is figuring out what's genuinely specific to an organization and its audience, then making very clear, very intentional decisions about what's in, what's out, and being ruthless about it. The result should feel like it couldn't belong to anyone else - aka, a sense of rightness. Research, tools, AI and committees can all inform those decisions but none of them can take responsibility for the answer. Somebody has to.

This bike isn't memorable because it's slick. It's memorable because somebody committed to their decisions and made it entirely theirs. I think that's what I've been responding to all these years… not the bike, but the author. (I still love the bike.) For a brand, my opinion isn’t whether everyone likes it. It’s whether the right people get it, and if there’s nothing else like it on the road. If there is, back to the shop.