Vanilla Bicycles, a custom hand-built bicycle framebuilder, is known for doing everything right. They have raised the bar with Vanilla-branded pit boots for the cyclocross aficionado. Well played.

The first Liu Lecture of 2009 is this Wednesday! April 15th!

Andy Spade
April 15th, 8:00PM Building 320, room 105
Stanford University

All Liu Lectures are free and open to the public. See you there!

UPDATE: I just found the bicycle in question on the Independent Fabrication website.

POST UPDATE UPDATE: The bicycle is showing up on the Roleur site at the Jack and Jimbo’s Bike Shop opening. Roleur is connected to Rapha. Rapha has some partnership with Jack and Jimbo’s. Jack and Jimbo’s is a side project from Jack Spade, which was founded by Andy Spade, who is coming to speak at Stanford University on April 15th, 2009 for a Liu Lecture! Full circle.

I’m really excited to present the lineup for this Spring’s David H. Liu Memorial Lecture Series in Design. All talks will begin at 8pm in building 320, room 105. Every lecture is free and open to the public!

Andy Spade will be speaking on Wednesday, April 15th. Spade had over a decade of experience with top advertising agencies Saatchi & Saatchi, Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, and TBWA/Chiat/Day managing accounts with companies such as Coca Cola, Evian, Reebok, Lexus, and Coach. He’s the branding and marketing man behind Kate Spade and Jack Spade (the companies that he and his wife created.) He has also been tapped to design the experiences of a number of companies including Delta’s Song Airlines and J. Crew retail experiment The Liquor Store. Spade’s latest project is Partners & Spade. It includes a highly conceptual retail experience in downtown Manhattan. Beyond all these business ventures, Spade is heavily involved in the art world. He is a patron to emerging artists, co-owner of a gallery, and curator of several exhibitions. Spade’s projects merge emotional branding, experience design, brilliant collaboration, and always a touch of surrealism.

Dr. Jonathan Cagan will be speaking on Monday, May 4th. Dr. Cagan is a co-director of the Masters in Product Development program at Carnegie Mellon and also the co-director for the school’s Center for Product Strategy and Innovation. He has the title of Barrett Ladd Professor in Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and holds appointments in the School of Design and Computer Science. He has expertise in product development and innovation methods for early stage product development. Both his design methods and computer-based design research have been applied in a variety of industries. Dr. Cagan is the author of two books: Creating Breakthrough Products (co-authored with Craig Vogel), and The Design of Things to Come (co-authored with Peter Boatwright and Craig Vogel). He has consulted with a variety of small and large companies in diverse areas on product development, brand strategy, and strategic planning. He is co-founder and chief technologist of DesignAdvance Systems, Inc., a company focused on developing CAD software for the early synthesis processes. Cagan teaches New Product Development at Carnegie Mellon and runs executive training sessions in small and large companies.

Alex Wipperfürth will be speaking on Thursday, May 21st. Wipperfürth is a partner at Dial House in San Francisco. He is the author of Brand Hijack, and the upcoming The Co-Creation Myth and The Fringe Manifesto. Dial House is part think-tank and part creative hot shop. The client list is diverse: from fringe (Napster, Doc Martens, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Jones Soda, Red Stripe, Altoids) to cutting edge (Current TV, New Yorker Magazine) to blue chip (Diageo, IBM, P&G/Clorox, Toyota, Coca-Cola). Projects range from innovative strategy, innovative research, meaningful creative expressions with DIY production to brand innovation. In earlier work, Wipperfürth had interviewed actual cult members and people in “consumer cults” (like Apple or Harley-Davidson fanatics) and made fascinating insights about their similarities.

(via NussbaumOnDesign)