It’s in the bag!

It’s hard to think about Bike to Work Day without imagining the yellow, green, and blue tote bags that riders pick up at energizer stations across the Bay. But who is behind that iconic art? For the 30th Anniversary of Bike to Work Day, we talked to Patrick Sean Gibson, the artist behind the past four BTWD designs.

The first artwork by Patrick Sean Gibson for Bike to Work Day in 2021

BIKE TO WHEREVER DAYS: Can you tell us about the designs you've done for Bike to Wherever Days?

PATRICK SEAN GIBSON: Initially I have to judge what the needs of the client are and how far I can push the art, because what I make on a personal level is sometimes very different than what a client might want. So as we've grown together, you can start to see that one design looks very different from the next year’s design. The very first year that I made the bag, it was the most safe design, I would say. Everyone seemed to be pretty happy with it. When they hit me up the next year, I tried to push the envelope a bit and I've been trying to do so since then. It's been such a fun gig and I look forward to it every year.

BTWD: Can you tell us what inspired this 30th anniversary design? 

PSG: There's been a lot of events in the world that have been hard to witness within the last year. I think just including that iconic symbol of the peace sign is so synonymous with bicycle riding culture. And regardless of what was going on and has been going on in the world, the idea of spreading peace should always be at play. 30 years of you guys doing this event and promoting bicycle culture and giving a voice to that culture, for whatever reason just makes sense to me. When you're riding a bike down the street, you don't think of a bicyclist as a negative person, they're almost like this facilitator of peace and love. So I know it might sound very Disney Channel-esque of me to be so cheesy with it. But I feel like that was the number one major aspect this year, like this is a great time to just throw out the peace symbol and incorporate it into the bike. 

Beyond that, there are some other items on the bag that were intentional that may not be as obvious. One of those was the featured typeface inside of the ring. It’s a typeface designed by OH no Type Co, a company currently in San Jose, formerly of Oakland. It's fun to work with the typeface of someone who's designing typography on a local level, which is definitely something I try to bring into my artwork. 

The bicycle frame itself is inspired by a frame made by MASH SF, a bike shop and company that specializes in making fixed gear bicycles. MASH SF is a hugely impactful brand, and it lives synonymously alongside skateboarding culture, which I'm part of. If I'm going to draw a bike, I love to draw a bike based off of a local brand. 

The last thing I'll note is the heritage that you guys have of using those three iconic Bike to Work Day colors. I'm a huge fan of minimal color palettes, and am super inspired by all of the poster art of the Fillmore back in the day. The background design of this year's bag is kind of loosely inspired by the flowy Fillmore posters of the late 60s. I mean, the general San Francisco trippy vibe, you know? 

BTWD: Can you tell us about your process?

PSG: The process of creating a graphic is sometimes just opening a door and not really sure what's going to be on the other side. Sometimes I can tap into the hippie side of me and maybe manifest what's on the other side of that door and just really try to visualize something. Sometimes it's more of a construction mindset where I'm really having to build elements to create whatever that final visual is and it feels a bit more like harder work. But in general, the process begins with looking at a bunch of photographs. 

For this bag, I went on the MASH SF website looking at people riding fixed gear bikes, looking at frames that I thought were cool. I’m the biggest fan of the visual culture that has been developed in San Francisco. Like what I was talking about with the typefaces and the flowy nature of the background, San Francisco is usually present in the work that I do for Bay Area institutions. But I'm always trying to pull from research by looking at photographs. From there, I'll start jotting down ideas j through words and then I'll make these insane initial sketches. They make so much sense to me, but sometimes when you see what they look like and you look at the final outcome, you're just like, this doesn't really make sense. But that initial sketch is enough to give me an idea of what a graphic might kind of look like. 

There's also the aspect of the tote bag’s physical size. You want the graphic to be big and bold. It's a statement piece, so I always try to use as much canvas area as possible. 

I like all the weirdo culture stuff. I love a huge graphic tee, people just representing the things that they love. All of those factors come into the final design and how I look at making stuff. 

BTWD: What do you love about biking and bike culture?

PSG: The bike culture I find the most fascinating are probably fixed gear bike messenger culture and BMX culture, which are maybe outliers. I live with a bike messenger and I have a bunch of bike messenger friends. There's so much heritage and there's so much respect in messenger culture that is sort of inherent from the 1990s. I relate to it a lot because it parallels skateboarding culture. I grew up skateboarding, working in skate shops, doing stuff for skate brands. That's just kind of who I am. And seeing another culture that's just as niche and has its different systems is really fascinating to me. 

As a kid, I was super into riding BMX bikes. I love the aspect of taking a bike and being able to do a trick with it, using your environment in creative ways, which I think ties to the artist in me. Like how one person can go through the geographic landscape of the city and see maybe a bike lane with a curb and then another person can see the curb cut and use that curve as a jump ramp to go into the bike lane, you know? 

So I love the outcast cultures of bicycle riding, and even last year’s tote bag, there was someone who had a bicycle that looked exactly like that and I have a photograph of it. The guy has long hair and I believe he's wearing the tote bag as well. I don't know if he ever saw the photo. 

I love the people who modify their bikes and do the double stacked bikes or make bikes out of shopping carts. I love all the fringe cultures of bicycle riding.

That being said, the non-fringe stuff is still really cool too. The bicycle is an amazing invention. There's no doubt about it.

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Patrick Sean Gibson is a "Blue-Collar Graphic Scholar" who operates a creative studio in San Francisco's Hunters Point neighborhood. Patrick specializes in Design, Illustration, Animation, and Filmmaking and creates within the intersection of where the analog world meets the digital superhighway