⚙️ #13 Designer in Chief ✏️

Jarett Volkoff, Head of Design here at Dust. I grew up in the Bay Area, Morgan Hill to be precise. I was lucky enough to live on a property with several acres of steep hillside, with friends that shared a passion of digging dirt. We spent our evenings and weekends building bike jumps and quickly learning what happens when a transition is too abrupt, or gap too long.

I had trouble focusing in school, so I sketched. I drew cars that I thought should exist, houses that I felt looked better than the typical Mediterranean inspired stucco developments that lined the Californian countryside. I loved studio art, graphite and painting portraits and figures was the most challenging, so that became my focus. When I learned about product design in High School, I never looked back.

I attended Virginia Tech's Industrial Design program, and although learning CAD was certainly a challenge, I knew I picked the right field. I began my career as an ID intern at Specialized Bicycles in my hometown. The design team was really strong, and the iterative process stressed the importance of prototyping. Foam, clay, wood + bondo, and 3d prints proved the best way to evolve dynamic surfaces (enter Dust_Model 1).

After school I thought I'd cut my teeth at an agency, so I moved to LA and joined the Pip Tompkin Design team. The studio primarily designed consumer electronics and toys for brands like Belkin, Polycom, Merchsource and Pelican to name a few. If a designer learns anything from working at an agency, it's likely the level of work they are capable of, with a timeline that's far too short.

In 2018 I moved to Bend, Oregon and joined Hydro Flask (HF). I worked on many products in this hybrid outdoors/housewares space, several of which are just starting to hit the shelves (check out the new HF French Press if you like hot coffee). I started working at UBCO on the new US product team (in the original HF building!). Although my time there was short lived as the team was impacted by reprioritisation and layoffs, I saw a glaring opportunity to bring great design and execution to an underserved and growing market, mid-weight eMoto.

The Dust team is devoted to the idea that we are designing the bike that's just right, with the brand to support it. We are working on the thing that we always wanted growing up, and still do today. I hope that you follow along as we begin to shed some light in the coming weeks on the development of this new shred sled.

Gold Dust

1. Behind the scenes of the Specialized Turbo Unit – The ebike development centre that doesn’t sleep. Hardly any other bike brands have as much ebike development capacity as the US giant Specialized. A vist to the Specialized Turbo development centre in Chamonix. (Here)
2. Dust F50 picked-up by Cycle News "Their goal is to be ultra-transparent on how money is allocated within the company and to take customers on the 20-month build journey. They see this bike as one that lives side-by-side with the current crop of internal combustion engines, not a replacement." (Here)
3. Dust F50 picked-up by RideApart "The team behind Dust Moto didn’t just pop up out of the blue either. All three of the company’s founders have extensive backgrounds in the mobility and technology sector, with electric bike company Ubco being a common denominator among them. Colin Godby, Jarett Volkoff, and Neil Tierney have impressive resumes consisting of companies like Belkin, Hydro Flask, Specialized, and Audi." (Here)

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Done and DUSTED for this week. See you all on the next lap.