The Bard's Shield

Good morning Folkriders,

If, in a rather simple exercise, you manage to trace a common thread in the history of mobility, you will notice an element that rarely denies its presence.  From the noble families of medieval knights, to the unfurled sails of seafaring conquerors, or the fuselages of flying machines, all the way to the large-scale manufacturing industries of all sorts. All are united by—it's appropriate to say—a specific trademark. A logo, a symbol. A mark that firmly establishes itself in the public's mind, making any form of indifference or lack of identification impossible. Marketing, as you can see, has more or less always existed.

But there's logo and logo. Message and message. Story and story. And now we'll tell you the story of Trovador's shield.

To begin, a bit of semantic clarity: our logo, strictly speaking, is a coat of arms, where the latter refers to a visual ensemble composed of a shield and any accompanying ornaments, which has been in widespread use since the Middle Ages. Don't worry, we're not going to launch into any lectures on heraldry, a fascinating subject that super-nerds like us could linger over for months.

However, it seemed to us, right from the start, necessary to find a synthetic image, one that recalled an ancient elegance, a nobility of soul and enterprise truly associated with the chivalric romances of distant eras.

We were talking a little while ago about common threads: we wanted to ideally trace another, we might say between Parsifal and Eddy Merckx , but in our case, more appropriately, between the obscure knights errant in search of adventure and the traveling cyclocosmos we are today. From heroes of folklore to folkriders , in short.

We loved the idea of a black and white shield , almost as if it were a basic palette on which to build the colorful stories depicted on our bicycles. As if the shield were meant to simultaneously protect and enclose, but without obscuring or stifling the creativity and artisanal passion behind our work. A silent, discreet, yet ever-present guardian , another, very solid thread that unites all our products and unites them under the embodyment of our philosophy, safeguarding their values and authenticity. Without too much frills and frills.

At the center of the shield, finally, it is up to all of us to decide what we see most clearly: we wanted, as you can imagine, the T of Trovador, but in a soft shape, without sharp stylizations or rigidity, also open to interpretation, almost as if we wanted to encourage each of us to choose how to characterize our own journey.

Personally, we have always seen it as a representation of a saddle, which of the bicycle components is perhaps the one most naturally inclined to recall the shape of the letter T.

The real question now is what you folkriders want to see . And whether you're ready for the adventure of this long route. Somewhere, truly, between Parsifal and Eddy Merckx.