Tri Bike Rack

A senior in the Industrial Design program at the Rhode Island School of Design, Brett Newman hails from Salt Lake City, Utah. Newman's passions for biking, skiing and making are evident throughout his work—whether it is designing a pair of sustainable skis with friend Patrick O'Sullivan, or creating the Tri Bike Rack.

Sustainable Skis

Nest Canisters

Since the age of ten, Newman loved drawing and would spend the majority of his time designing numerous iterations on soccer shoes and athletic equipment. Drawing soccer shoes was his dream job long before he knew of Industrial Design as a viable career path. His focus has changed a lot since then, but the primary principles of Industrial Design (problem solving, getting your hands dirty, and designing for a real purpose) are still a huge motivation in his work.

Below are two of his projects, the Tri Bike Rack and Ready to Reassemble.

Tri Bike Rack

Commercial and residential bike display systems have different and specific requirements, but the goal for the Tri Bike Rack was to create one system that could seamlessly function in both environments. For the bike shop setting, Tri offers a modular solution that can easily display the bike in any of the three most popular orientations; floor mounted, dropouts, or by the top tube. For those who desire a solution in the home, Tri is made from high quality materials and pays as much attention to style and detail as the bikes that it stores.

Ready to Reassemble

Ready to Reassemble was a project done with Oliver Henderson. A furniture solution designed around the specific needs of young urban renters, Ready to Reassemble attempted to address the needs of these individuals. Research showed them that these individuals were moving around once every two years, and although much of the urban lifestyle caters to these fast moving patterns, their furniture did not.

Ikea, the primary source of new furniture for this user group, was attractive for its price tag but is not built to last. Newman and Henderson were determined to design a system that would pack and unpack with ease and could grow to adapt to the urban renter's living space.

Newman and Henderson identified shelving and table surfaces as the primary needs for our consumers, and set about designing a system that not only let them choose the amount of furniture they required, but also the function. The end result was a variable size coffee table/shelving system that packed into its own shipping and carrying container.

Newman will be starting as a junior designer at Kaiju Studios in Providence after graduation, and hopes to keep working and collaborating with the friends and colleagues he has made while at RISD.