UNBOUND // DESIGN // PAGE 71
THE NAKED CHEF: CRAIG DENT
Text: Adam Wheeler Pictures: Heiko Mandl, KISKA
AN ENGLISHMAN IN SALZBURG. KISKA’S CREATIVE LEAD FOR KTM/HUSQVARNA CRAIG DENT HAS BEEN A KEY FIGURE IN THE VISUAL SHAPE AND FORM OF KTM FOR ALMOST A DECADE AND ONE OF THE VISIONARIES BEHIND THE RAMPAGING SUPER DUKE AESTHETIC. HE IS THE CONTRIBUTOR, POT-STIRRER AND CURATOR OF KTM’S NAKED CREATIONS – SO WE STOLE AN AFTERNOON OF HIS VALUABLE TIME AWAY FROM 2016-17-18 MOTORCYCLES TO COME AND ASK THE ‘WHYS’ AND ‘HOWS’ BEHIND THE UNFORGETTABLE STREET LOOK…
It’s inspiring to be at KISKA. It is how you’d imagine the offices of Apple to be. Except smaller, Austrian in flavour and with i’Power’ instead of iPods. The KTM 1290 SUPER DUKE R stands proudly in the reception area; when we meet the gregarious and articulate Craig Dent we are led upstairs past desks of impossibly young and clever people, all burning gray matter in a conjugate atmosphere of conception.
An internship at BMW, where he was mentored by revered designer Edgar Heinrich, then led to a three year stint with Honda at a studio in Frankfurt where he struggled as a component in the vast red empire. “I felt isolated in the studio and had the feeling like suddenly you might see something on the market one day that looked roughly like what you might have sketched, but you were not involved in the development at all. It was frustrating.”
Dent, 33 years old, is one of a multi-national team at the agency famed for their visual iinfluence at KTM, from their bikes to their racing image to communications. The airy office, a 45-minute drive from Mattighofen, is arguably the manufacturer’s most important annex. As a vital conjurer in the image of the 125 Duke and the famed 1290 – among other models both in orange and white – Dent is well positioned to chat about KTM’s Naked direction. Short of shedding his clothes, the father of two has been instrumental in helping propel the offroad masters to be the industry bar-setters when it comes to road motorcycles that ‘bare all’. We don't want Craig to get too literal with his nakedness today but we are keen to strip away the reasons why the Dukes – and the staggering 1290 in particular – came to be. Dent set out on his path via a first class degree in Transportation Design at Coventry University at the beginning of the century, with a love of motorcycles instilled by his father and fascination with the racing scene allowing him a precious route to think outside the box. “University was a highly competitive, testosterone-filled environment of guys that just wanted to do crazy-glamour renderings of flash things and super cars,” he recollects, while sitting down and fiddling now and again with a pencil, as if by habit. “I love those types of cars but there were already enough companies out there doing that and I believed there were already a lot of people wanting to do that kind of design. I wanted to focus on the motorbike side of things because, until then, I hadn’t really found anybody else doing it. I tried to absorb as much as I could of the glamour and passion of the car side and do my own take on it. I wanted to know if I could do bike stuff in the same way.”
"The Beast" represented some of the freest expressions of Dent, KISKA and KTM’s beliefs and was arguably the most visually startling naked motorcycle to hit the market. The bike rapidly sold out. KISKA was a name that had been on his radar thanks to the appearance of one of KTM's iconic Street models. “I remember seeing the RC8 show bike on the front of MCN (Motorcycle News) while I was still at uni and thinking ‘who did that?!’ I was led to KTM and then this small design agency on the outskirts of Salzburg and thought ‘I have to get to know this place’. Back then, KISKA was 100 people and KTM still had a reputation on the market as the ‘little orange thing that sometimes causes a stir and then disappears’. They had already caused a stir on the design side.”
Dent heads a young and dynamic team of half a dozen designers that can expand in size depending on the projects and the workload.