I have “Pedal Turns the Crank Kickstarter buzz” on my calendar every day, and I’m not sure exactly how to get that going – but it’s day 1, so… here are some of Khai Tran’s bicycle studies (he’s been drawing a LOT of bicycles lately) and some of his free-associating Post-its based on my ongoing Google Sheet brain dump of different kinds of bikes, bike cultures, families, clothes, etc. Diversity in all things, always with bicycles as the through-line.
The backstory (short version):
The pedal turns the…
CRANK!
The crank turns the…
CHAINWHEEL!
The chainwheel turns the…
CHAIN!
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This little call-and-response chant was a game I made up for my bike-loving kids. It became a family tradition on our frequent bike outings, and now it’s becoming a children’s picture book, featuring bikes and families of all kinds coming from all kinds of places to meet up for a big ride together.
One day in September at the Danbury Hackerspace, where I run Typeflow (my print book/ebook design/production company), painter Khai Tran turned to me and said, “Ever think about doing a children’s book?” and I said, “I actually have one, but illustrators are too expensive.”
Then after a long, dumb pause, I said, “You’re an illustrator…”
We’ve been having weekly production meetings ever since.
(Here’s one of them. Khai likes my Xootr Swift.)
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The chain turns the…
SPROCKET!
The sprocket turns the…
BACK WHEEL!
What turns the pedal?
MY FEET!
***
Coming soon to Kickstarter!
Well, soon-ISH. I don’t know how much lead time to leave for bike bloggers/magazines/influencers (do you?), and I haven’t even written the Kickstarter main video yet. But we’re STOKED every time we meet.
More buzz coming. Maybe along the way I’ll figure out what that means.
(If you know how to do buzz stuff with bike people, I’d love to learn about it.)
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Keith Snyder 