‘Race-Blu Series’: Designing the Yamaha-Blue Sports Identity
For 2013, Yamaha launched a completely new livery that uses a combination of “Yamaha Blue” and matte grey in an attempt to create a new aesthetic style. By highlighting selected body parts in Yamaha Blue, the designers have been able to focus attention on various components within a given bike’s body structure.
In addition to the blend of Yamaha Blue and matte grey for the bodywork and various engine parts, the ‘Race-Blu’ Series also feature blue wheel rims which aim to underline Yamaha’s racing DNA.
“Yamaha has at least three strong colour identities” says product planning manager Naoki Koike. “There is the famous yellow and black combination that Kenny Roberts raced with in the seventies, there is the white and red combination that is based on our corporate colours, and there is the blue that is our official worldwide racing colour.”
Yellow and black livery design YZF-R1 2006
White and red livery design YZF-R1 2012
Blue livery design YZR-M1 2012
He continues “For 2013, we decided to strengthen this blue identity colour and introduce it across a range of our models.”
The company’s Italian product planner Guglielmo Fontana Rava adds “Yamaha has applied blue for various models for many years now. But we felt that we needed to give it a much fresher feel. So we studied a new approach, where the blue is used as an accent, for example on specific components, instead of on the full body of the bike.”
R6 2013
R6 2013
He reveals “With this strategy, we have the flexibility to use different combinations with blue in the future. For 2013 for example, the blue is used always in combination with a modern and sophisticated matte grey. This grey gives a strong highlight to the blue components. So we have a nice technical feel on the bike and it’s really fresh compared to other colourings!” This new colour was labeled “Race Blu” from then on.
M1 MotoGP Misano 2012
The first introduction was on Yamaha’s factory team MotoGP bikes, at the race in Misano in September 2012. Italian designer Aldo Drudi adopted the grey-and-blue combination, with all sponsor elements, to the shape of the race bike.
M1 Jorge Lorenzo 2012
The race culminated in a victory for Jorge Lorenzo. Jorge commented on the Race Blue: “I am very proud to ride with these special colours. The Yamaha racing colours are always very iconic and have a great history. It’s very cool that racing fans will be able to ride in the same colours that we race in!”
R125 2013
Actually, the whole series of production bikes that adopt this colour scheme for 2013 includes the models of R1, R6, R125, FZ8, Fazer8, XJ6, Diversion and Diversion-F.
XJ6 2013
Source: Yamaha
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