A chance encounter on Broadway Market in 2019 lead to a collaboration on the on-frame graphics of the new Strael 3.0 – and sparked an idea for a series of cycling visual artworks.

Intuitively drawn to the name, we looked into its origin and meaning: Fairlight expresses a fondness for those personal, special moments of experiencing nature. Light as a volume has fascinated people for centuries.

To match Fairlight’s design philosophy, we were looking to express this phenomenon through a functional, graphical visualisation, with the air of a watch face or compass – after all, bikes are our navigational instruments for seeking out those moments of balance.

The model name Strael confirmed what data sources we should be looking at: the terms of altitude, azimuth, and radiation – how science describes our position to the sun – became our inspiration for the Solar Pattern.

Solar Pattern: Inspiration

The Strael 3.0 Solar Pattern is a minimalist visualisation of solar data. It represents sun exposure in London on 4 specific dates of the year 2020: the solstice and equinox dates, the extreme points of the sun’s movement through the year.

The top tube pattern shows summer and winter solstice , the shortest and longest days in the year. The underside shows autumn equinox and spring equinox, where night and day are equally long.

The underlying vertical grid of lines represents 24 hours of the day, read from bottom to top. The line weight represents the sun exposure per hour, with extreme highs merging into blocks. Hours with strong cloud cover create gaps in the pattern. Temperature extremes are indicated in contrasting colour.