NDLSS
There’s a universal truth in cycling. No matter how good you are, how well you’ve trained or how fastidiously you’ve managed your nutrition. You will bonk. Our kit design celebrates those times when you find yourself stopping at a petrol station, prowling the aisles dazzled by the bright colours of crisp packets, sweet wrappers and fizzy drinks. Welcome to The Roadside Diner's Club.
We always see the glamorous side of cycling on instagram – elegant espressos and patisserie mid-ride in some beautiful piazza. The reality is we all end up at these vending machines and mini-markets, filling up on salty snacks and sugar to get us home.
We were really taken with the assault on the senses as you enter these shops. Rows and rows of bright coloured packaging, often stacked pragmatically with labels obscuring labels and jarring hues nestled side by side. We wanted to represent those blocks of colour and the semi-obscured brand names.
Rendering the NDLSS logo as a Mars logo became an obsession, that element became more prevalent as the design progressed. It actually started as a different idea initially — paying tribute to Diego Maradona who blew our minds in the 1986 World Cup. He played for Napoli who were sponsored by Mars and that kit always looked incredible. It was great that the idea worked for the Roadside Diners Club too. The key element that pervaded was the overlaying blocks of colour, simplified down with slices of logos and typography half hidden.
We're incredibly proud of the final result, we share a spirit and an attitude with NDLSS, making this collaboration so successful. We certainly wouldn't have arrived as the same solution for another cycling brand.