OPEN EYE : SIMON PRADES

The journey

For this entry in the OPEN EYE series we'd like to introduce Simon Prades, an illustrator born into a German/Spanish family, living and working in Offenburg, Germany. His client list runs from The New Yorker and The New York Times to Nike, Apple and Adobe. His project for OPEN is called "Askatasuna", and here is the story behind it:

"The idea for this project had been with me for a long time: a journey across the Pyrenees, from the Spanish Basque Country to Catalonia, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. I had been dreaming about this journey for a long time and finally I got the time to make it happen.

The trip was meant to bring together my two passions: drawing and cycling.

From blackbook to frame

The experiences, sketches, and memories gathered along the way would later be captured by hand on an OPEN frame.

I brought a blackbook with me and documented the trip through drawings, words and photos. Back home I wanted to create a visual language, derived from this material and the memories in my mind and apply it to a bike frame somehow.

My life has always been full of languages and translation. We spoke different languages at home, different cultures lived under one roof, I speak Spanish to my mother, German with my dad and French with my wife and son. It’s no surprise that I ended up being an illustrator, translating words into images for a living, I guess. Creating a (visual) language is a different story, though, and it took me a long time and many hours of drawing and thinking.

Back to the studio

After completing the 1,200-kilometre journey, I returned to my studio and began the process of developing a visual language that could do justice both to the impressions of the trip and to the unique form of a bicycle frame.

I wanted it to feel genuine and honest, honoring the beautiful landscapes I had seen, expressing the love I have for Oteiza and Arantzazu, the sincerity of riding a bicycle and my longing for a country I only know as a visitor, even though my family has its origins there.

After all, drawing on a flat sheet of paper is quite different from painting a bicycle frame.

Thanks a lot to Andy at OPEN for setting me up with the frame, and thanks for all the nice conversations about cycling, art and everything in between. Simon.

To find more about Simon's work, check his latest work at www.simonprades.com and follow him on Instagram at Simon_Prades

Here below is the finished bike with some photos from the process.

Enjoy the photo gallery! (tons of beautiful pictures, click on the first one to make it bigger and keep scrolling!)