From Koblenz to the USA – and until the weekend with a special exhibition in Essen: Canyon Bicycles
It was an exciting year for the bike manufacturer Canyon: Not only started the wold’s biggest cycle race, the Tour de France, in Germany and the world champion of time trial, Tony Martin, took his seat on a Canyon bike for the three racing weeks. Canyon was also awarded the title “Red Dot Award: Design Team of the Year 2017” and is represented with a sales and logistics center since mid-August in the USA.
Canyon is “Red Dot: Design Team of the Year 2017”
Since 1985, Canyon once starting as “Radsport Arnold” works for milestones like these. In the success story of the company, the award has a special value for CEO Roman Arnold: “For Canyon, being named Red Dot: Design Team of the Year means the expression of utmost appreciation of the huge dedication of our developers and designers over many years. Winning an award for something that we consider to be especially important without putting ourselves forward for this award highlights the significance of this distinction. We are honoured that Canyon as a bicycle manufacturer will take its place in a “Hall of Fame” alongside the world’s biggest designers.”
Due to its expansion to the American market, Canyon even more meets former Red Dot: Design Teams of the Year, such as Blackmagic, Bosch and Veryday, at eye level. After a long time of planning and a long lead time, the bikes, designed in Germany, are available by direct-marketing in 50 US-states.
Reduced design for functional improvement
Even overseas, Canyon will stay true to its leading sentence “Pure Cycling” as the sophisticated and reduced bike constructions are their trademark. For Peter Kettenring, apart from Lars Wagner manager of the Canyon Design Team, the best simplification is not only an artistic reduction, but also a functional improvement: “That is a challenge and a difficulty at the same time. Not only do you take something away, you also create an improvement.”
The excellent work of the designers of Canyon can still be admired until 27 August in the Red Dot Design Museum in Essen. In the special exhibition “Canyon - Design that talks”, the company from Koblenz gives an insight into the design process, production stages as well as into different materials and shows selected mountain bikes, racing bikes and children bikes.
» More about the special exhibition “Design that talks”
» More about the Canyon Design Team
» Interview with Peter Kettenring and Lars Wagner
