"Mr Ishiyama is a kind of guru in design. He created a philosophy: you need to treat the human plus the machine as one body. In the beginning I thought this was a bit strange, but after working 10 years in design in many real projects, I have found out that this is very understandable and a very good philosophy. When we design a motorcycle, we never forget the rider's mind, the emotional thing, the feeling you should get from sitting on the bike and riding it, feeling one with it."

Design manager Hiroshi Ohta joins in: "We always apply a combination of a human approach and a mechanical approach. The latest MT-01 is a perfect example of that: The mind of the rider, the soul of the machine and the interaction together are all considered deeply!"

Sasanami adds: "With the latest R1 we focused on the interior a lot, the part that the rider experiences when he sits on the bike. We decided that a sporty mind has to go together with a sporty interior, and that is a very tight interior, perfectly fitting to the rider without any excess. Ultra sporty, but with very high quality too."

Amsterdam
GK has a branch in Europe, 'GK Design Europe', located in Amsterdam.

"Amsterdam is a beautiful town with a lot of culture, and also it is a neutral place as a motorcycle market. From here on we can approach any European country easily. If we would be in one of the big countries, we would be influenced too much by that particular country's culture and not enough by the others."

Still, we can feel some envy in the designer's answers: "but of course for motorcycle riding, we would like to be more often in the mountains with many winding roads!"

Shock
Are all designers bike enthusiasts? Sasanami was a late starter: "When I was young, I didn't have an interest in motorcycles at all. Until in highschool, when I made a testride on my friend's bike. I was in shock! I suddenly realized the power of a motorcycle and felt it so intense, that I have loved motorcycles ever since."

He explains how he got involved in the design world: "At first I wanted to be an engineer, I studied mechanical engineering. But I found out that engineering is a very specialist job in the company: you work only on the engine, or only on the frame for example. As a designer, you do the whole motorcycle shape, not just parts of it. Since then I wanted to be a designer".

Challenges
"The most important thing in design is the relationship with the engineers. Engineering has to approve the basic proportions of a motorcycle, and those basic proportions determine 60% of the design image itself."

Ohta adds: "In the first stage, the concept stage of the design, we propose ideal proportions, and hope that the engineers will approve the feasibility. If we work together with an open, aggressive engineer the design will become very nice."

Can he give examples of such models?
"The first R1 was a great example, the latest R1 also, we could keep a lot of the ideal design image in the final production model. Also the DragStar 650, with its beautiful design oriented frame, is a good example and the snowmobile RX1 and of course in the past the SRX 600 and the V-Max."

Different cultures
In GK Design Europe's offices, people from many different countries are working together. Especially the combination of Japanese and European designers creates an inspiring working environment.

"This gives a good mix between the European and the Japanese systems of design. We combine the teamwork from Japan and the design sense from Europe."

Which trends are prominent at the moment in the design field?

"In Europe, especially in car design, there is more attention to the dynamic proportions and the surfaces to give an image of movement. This is actually more close to motorcycle design. In general we see that everything is becoming more sporty, more dynamic."

"In motorcycles we see the influence from MotoGP, but still we try to be unique and give each motorcycle its own originality. Every manufacturer is attacking the same categories, so we want to stand out with our own Yamaha originality in each of those categories."