Published September 27, 2018 by Michael Le Pard , Editor‑in‑Chief

Total Motorcycle Logos 1999 – 2002

 

 

 

A collection of artifacts of historical importance from our past.
A logo is much more than just a symbol of a company, it is its face.

 

Year 1999 – All started here, with a few fan pages devoted to the Honda CB400T.

At the time, I was ecstatic about 120 hits a month. I used a free hosting service provider and our website at the time was: http://konica3.virtualave.net (the URL doesn’t exist anymore). The name “the Rider homepage”. You might be wondering why it was called “konica3”, this is because the site was my photography site before this for Konica cameras (which I still own today) and I just “recycled” the URL with Konica and CB400T stuff on it.

As “the Rider homepage” grew into more than just a fan page for the Honda CB400T I needed a new name, something that encompassed everything about motorcycling as that was my new goal. I wanted to provide a site that did not exist on the internet, a site driven to support motorcyclists and motorcycling worldwide that was friendly, helpful, useful and unbiased. I was tired of reading biased motorcycle magazine reviews and while there were motorcycle sites online there was nothing that offered it all in one spot.

 

No “Rider Homepage” logo example
survived.

 

Year 2000-2001 – “The Rider homepage” was changed to “100% motorcycle website”.

While I had been designing websites since 1984 (hosted on a Commodore 64 on a 5 1/4″ floppy via a 300 baud pocket-modem) the internet was still pretty new in 2000 when Total Motorcycle launched. Bandwidth and server space was very expensive, so the use of graphics was limited both to save server space and for loading speed as “high-speed internet” (that’s up to 5x the speed of a 14.4kb modem!) was very new at the time.

I wanted to build something unique that people would keep coming back to.

By offering content that was helpful, personal, friendly and useful TMW started on the road to success. I still follow those basic principles today with our website.

This was our first logo… well, at least it was a typeface (Georgia). It brings back a lot of memories.

100% Motorcycle Website

This is what the home page text looked like back then. This is the one of the parts that survives today from late 2001. Note the hybrid use of “Total 100% Motorcycle Website”. Yes, it is pretty basic, but then again, actually adding an image to be shown on the internet was pretty advanced!

100% Motorcycle Website Motorcycle Gallery ~ Post your motorcycle photo here ~ Reliable Motorcycle Buyers Guide Beginner Biker – Over 70 pages of goodies Our new Message Board! Welcome to the new Total 100% Motorcycle Website. The purpose of this site is to share knowledge about motorcycles, motorcycling, from around the world. No matter what you ride, or where you go, we all share that amazing feeling of freedom, spirit and adventure on our bikes. What no bike? What are you waiting for! Get out there!

 

 

2002 – Birth of the Total Motorcycle name, logo and first freehost totalmotorcycle URL.

I was going to go with 100% Motorcycle Website but realized I couldn’t register a “%” sign! So after brainstorming for another word for 100% with my wife we came up with the word “Total” after discarding many others.

Thus the name “Total Motorcycle” was born.

We added http://totalmotorcycle.web1000.com and http://totalmotorcycle.t35.com among others (the URLs don’t exist anymore) to spread the bandwidth and our growing size out more on the free webhosts. Thanks to this I could now develop a logo and direction for Total Motorcycle, thus the first graphic logo as created (below). I wanted something that looked fast, speedy and had a motorcycle image in it. It was black and white because it would load faster (smaller file size) as the majority of visitors were still on dial up modems.

 

Total Motorcycle Website Logo v1 (Pre-Total Motorcycle.com).
Actual size.

Total Motorcycle Website Logo v2 (Pre-Total Motorcycle.com).
Actual size.

Animated Total Motorcycle Website Logo V3 (Pre-Total Motorcycle.com).
Actual size.

 

At this stage, we knew we had something good, that people wanted. Rather than go “corporate and commercial” like so many other sites, we fiercely hung onto our original ideas (offering content that was helpful, personal, friendly and useful). In fact, 19 years later in 2018, “helpful, personal, friendly and useful” is still my mantra!