BEN EDWARDS @benedwardstv
A DESIGN FOR LIFE? NOT ANY MORE…
While we absorb the revised car liveries (or, rather, colour splashed on naked carbonfibre) now the season is under way, there’s also the fun of seeing different helmet designs. Individual paint schemes have always mattered, particularly when identifying which driver is which within a team.
Nowadays a driver’s choice of artwork is sometimes seen as less distinctive and much more changeable than it used to be.
That is confirmed by Mike Fairholme, a helmet artist at one time responsible for 12 F1 drivers in the 1990s. Having trained as a graphic designer, he has seen a major shift in design and technique.
“The process of painting a helmet is different today,” Mike says. “It’s a form of art, not a graphic. In a way it’s a fashion evolution; what I did related to a heraldic style where a knight wearing a helmet had a shield with a coat of arms to identify him. For me a graphic idea sends a message without words. That was part of my inherent understanding of how to present and create something noticeable.”
Mike’s career began as crash helmets attained greater visibility; one year after they became mandatory for motorbike riders in 1973, Mike started riding himself and it felt natural to paint his own helmet and make it personal.
His final art college show was inspired by a friend who offered him a helmet on condition that he painted it for the display.“I kind of freaked the tutors out,” he laughs, “because the graphics world in those days was all about two-dimensional images and illustrations, but here was me with a 3D object with elaborate paintwork on.”
By the mid-1980s Fairholme was operating as a race helmet specialist and, while drivers would often have a concept, it was up to Mike to transfer the design into a visual message that would work at speed and distance. “I was always mindful of the appropriateness of colour,” he recalls. “The designs from my era tended to be two or three colour designs and with that you can use the contrast.”
David Coulthard had carried Scotland’s national flag, the Saltire, on his crash helmets since his karting days but, as he moved to F1, the designs needed sophisticated yet clear adjustments.
“David’s helmet evolved when he was at Williams because he had to get the Rothmans badge on, so the position of the Saltire had to move back. Later, to su
