Over a number of years, our team collaborated with the UnitedHealthcare Children’s Foundation (UHCCF), to produce hand-painted bicycle frames to honor and benefit young UHCCF grant recipients. Each year, the team interviews six to eight kids and uses their responses as inspiration for the art.
For each kid, I designed a unique look that tied in with their interests, etc. Once the bike art is final it is then sent to our bike painter, Brad Galvin at Dirt Designs Graphic. Each bike is auctioned off and sold to the highest bidder. All of the proceeds going to the UHCCF grant families to help support them.
Artist
A wise response to the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" inspired "Artist". Preston, 9, of Texas “wants to be an artist, because you can use your imagination to create something that people will enjoy looking at forever." Reminiscent of Jackson Pollock's iconic abstract expressionism, the bike begins with a black "canvas" and is drizzled with primary colors and finished with baby blue chainstay, fork and logo accents. For those of us who remember it, this bike may also remind us of a certain decade with a very distinct aesthetic.
Great Outdoors
This bike celebrates Kate's love of camping and nature, and her favorite color purple, in pristine fashion. The color scheme is deceptively minimal, but takes immense precision to create – five individual hues, from orange-yellow to deep blue, are blended to produce sunset tones, and a layer of pine trees and a starry sky remind us all to take a deep breath and enjoy the ride. Bonus points if you can spot and name the five real constellations that decorate this natural masterpiece!
“WW2” is inspired by Juliet's love of reading – one genre, and one book, in particular! Juliet loves to read historical fiction, and her favorite book is the award-winning young-adult classic, "The War that Saved My Life". The book details a young girl's unique, challenging journey through World War II, and its beautiful cover art inspired the rustic, weathered look. Powerful quotations from Juliet's favorite novel and another well-known classic from Winston Churchill complete this warhorse.
WW2
Noah, 10, of Florida provided the inspiration for "Science". In our survey, Noah said, “I like math and science, because I like experiments.” We did our own experiment and used a unique masking technique to color the frame. It starts with a vibrant, 5-color fade, followed by a coat of pearl white. Clusters of molecules allow the colorful gradient to peek through, also on full display inside the chainstays and fork. The Diamondback logo is displayed in a one-of-a-kind outline.
Science
This intricate design was inspired by the beautiful terracotta pottery of ancient Greece, Laura’s favorite country. Her love of Greece comes from “a good childhood memory,” so the design team reached deep into the past to produce a grand, authentic motif inspired by Greece’s Iron Age pottery masterpieces. Bronze metallic and black with gold pearl paint make this frame shine in the peloton.
Greece
"Snake" is inspired by Nathan, 9, of Utah. Nathan’s favorite animal is “the Green Anaconda. It has a dinosaur ancestor and it is the biggest and heaviest snake.” This bike practically hisses, the result of a complex paint process. Scales are applied by hand in sheets of hand-weeded, laser-cut stickers, and blended into a pure green hue near the bike’s joints. A deep crimson serves as the “underbelly” on the stays, fork, and logo accents. The real snake magic comes from a space-age clear coat that returns a rainbow of iridescent hues in sunlight.
Snake
Kaelyn has a passion for nature and biology and loves “studying animals and how they interact with their environment,” so the design team concocted this radiant, organic design. A gradient with two of her favorite colors – purple and blue--gives the frame its soft base, while “cells” printed with metallic ink speak to the beautiful architecture inside us all.
Biology
"Firefighter" is inspired by Bryce, 8, of West Virginia. When Bryce grows up, he wants to be “a firefighter, because they help save people.” The design begins with a bright, firetruck-red base-coat and is accented with real gold leaf inside the chainstays and inside the primary Diamondback logo, which is styled in classic firefighter 3D lettering. The front-end of this engine is finished with a chrome fork and pearl white cockpit. We can practically hear the sirens.
Firefighter
This universal design celebrates both Sarah’s passion for art and a certain space epic in a galaxy far away (the original trilogy, of course). Sarah loves painting and drawing because “it’s inspiring to feel like you can do anything with just a paintbrush,” so painter Brad put his own special touch on this frame, with blue, teal and red “Stardust” misted over a deep blue and violet ice pearl base.
Galaxy
This unmistakable aesthetic of "Gladiator" from the mind of Lucas, who dreams of visiting Rome's Colosseum. We connected little warrior Lucas with one of Rally Cycling own's warriors on the bike, Brandon McNulty, the team's GC leader for the Tour of California. The "trojan" colors on this frame should be familiar to our SoCal family – luminous bronze-gold and scarlet decorate a pearl white base coat, with laurel wreaths throughout and a Roman mosaic pattern decorating the top tube.
Gladiator
Bike descriptions written by Sam Wiebe