Bike colours and graphics are one of the biggest headaches for bike manufacturers. I remember watching the graphics team slave for 4-5 months over designs. Often they would have to submit 3 different designs for the more "out there" bikes like the urban BMXs, the team bikes etc.

They would sit there pouring over the photos they took at Eurobike and Interbike, going through the "colours of the year" magazines from Pantone etc as well as have the whole company walk by and give their two cents.

Then the dealers were asked to go over the product managers picks and more changes were done.

Graphics were often put on the bikes up in China and pics sent back and then more changes done.

The graphics guys would be printing out and wrapping blank frames just to get the graphics just right. The new tubes shapes do make their lives hard.

In all it took 4-5 months for 3 designers fulltime to do graphics for over 150 models of bikes. The there was a 4 month rest before they started the whole process all over again!