Concept · Bike shop

Tuned by people who ride it

A bike shop that makes most of its money in the workshop, not on the shop floor. The site had to reflect that split honestly.

Type
Concept — self-directed
Sector
Bike shop
Typeface
IBM Plex Mono for specs, Archivo for text
Palette
  • #171C1F
  • #C6F04B
  • #E6EAEC
  • #2A3338
Slate near-black, lime, pale grey

The premise

A workshop-led bike shop: servicing, wheel builds, fitting, and a smaller retail side. Customers are riders who know what they want done.

The problem

Bike shop sites usually sell bikes and hide the workshop, when the workshop is the recurring revenue and the reason people come back. And the audience is technical — vague service descriptions read as evasive to someone who knows what a bottom bracket is.

The approach

The service menu as a spec readout

IBM Plex Mono sets the workshop list: job, what is included, turnaround, price, in aligned columns. Monospace is doing real work here rather than signalling 'technical' — it is what makes the figures line up down the column so the list can be scanned rather than read.

Turnaround stated, not implied

Same-week is the promise, so it appears next to every job rather than in a paragraph further down. For a commuter deciding whether to drop a bike off, that is the entire decision.

Lime on slate, used sparingly

One high-energy accent against a near-black ground, restricted to actions and figures. Enough to feel like a workshop, restrained enough not to feel like an energy drink.

Retail underneath, not removed

Bikes and parts still have a place — below the workshop, because that reflects both the business and what visitors came for.

What I would want before building it for real

The mono column alignment is the load-bearing detail. Set that list in a proportional face and it stops being a spec sheet and becomes a paragraph with prices in it.

Northline Cycles concept site design, full page.
The full page. Open the live concept

This is a concept, not client work. Northline Cycles is not a real business. The site was designed and built end to end to work through a specific problem, and it is shown here as design thinking rather than as a job I was hired to do.