HORT & Rapha Talk @ Bakken & Bæck

Free beer and tacos? Count me in!

A couple of months back Bakken & Bæck, a design studio in Oslo, had an open house night with two guest design speakers; Eike König of Hort & Luke Scheybeler of Rapha. Having heard of both HORT & Rapha before but never actually knowing much about either of them I figured this talk would be perfect to give me an insight into building up both a design studio and a clothing company.

HORT is a Berlin-based design studio that has been around for more than two decades, and Eike gave a great talk on a lot of the work they've done and the trials and tribulations of working with big companies such as Nike.

Their work came across as playful but not childish, they produce very strong work especially the work they've done for Nike. Turns out they've been working with Nike for many years now and they've so much work for them that they made a Tumblr page just to display everything that didn't always get used.

Aside from that is was very inspiring to listen to a professional who's had a range of different clients but most importantly has been in the industry for over 20 years and has a lot of knowledge to share with us.

The second guest speaker Luke Scheybeler, co-founder of Rapha and fellow northener. Rapha is considered, by most, to be the world's nicest cycling brand. As Rapha's former creative director, Luke was responsible for a large part designing the branding, graphics and website. He spoke a lot about the origins of Rapha and how they came to be, taking a look back at the old cycling gear worn by cyclists they soon realised there was a real market for a high end designer wear. This was where they stepped in, realising how over complicated the cycling clothes were at the time they decided it was time for a huge change and simplification of the style and materials used.

Old style cycling clothing

They took certain aspects of the old style and adopted it into a new minimalist style, one which stood out in the world of cycling gear.

I also managed to catch up with Luke later after the talk to chat about Rapha in more detail. Even after a couple of drinks this was very much nerve-racking for me, but I some how mustered up the confidence to go over and speak to him. Soon after establishing that we were both from a similar town back home, I asked him about how Rapha came about. I was surprised to find out that in actual fact cycling wasn't a big interest for him, co-founding a brand of any kind generally you'd assume that both people have a real interest or passion for it. But it seemed to be more down to the fact that there was a market for what they wanted to produce at the time, which I guess was partly down to having an eye for it but also a little bit of luck to jump into the industry at the right time. Either way safe to say that Rapha revolutionised the way cycling clothing was designed.