Tenspeed Hero is a young young thing, so every day there is something to build on. With unlimited resources we might spend our time at all the Pro Tour events, riding with Boonen in his new car, having coffee with Marianne Vos, snowboarding with Emma Johansson, getting stoned and saying Tejay van Garderen (over and over), and getting the inside scoop on Tyler Farrar’s hair stylists, but this would take a loan from the world bank. While some heroes have been known to fly, we occasionally find our Hero coverage limited to wherever our two wheels will take us. We flirted with the idea of buying some pictures form Cor Vos or the Associated Press, but something felt a little hollow about trying to communicate the Hero experience from the capable but impersonal grocery cart of images.
Enter the Noun Project. The Noun Project was created by a team of designers, programmers and researchers under the direction of Scott Simple, aka Scott Thomas. Their studio is right down the street from us in Chicago. You may have heard of Scott Thomas as he was the design director from the Obama campaign in 2008. With The Noun Project his team has built an elegant and free database of common and newly created down-loadable symbols. You will find these stand-ins when our frequent flier miles are used up and our interns can’t draw, but the story must be told. Below we posted some of our favorite symbols. The Sloth is a staff favorite. We are going to use it at least once if Pippo Pozzato doesn’t stop sucking wheels on the big days. Pippo you have been warned!
