Moto Laverda Italia

Moto Laverda Breganze

Alternatively?

Motorcycles Laverda Italy

Mercury in Retrograde sent me down a weird path. Spiraled out of control, as it were.

What I discovered, and a fact I don’t think I was aware of at the time, but at some point, I owned one of the fastest production motorcycles in its era, a big three-lung Laverda.

Chasing data on the inter-webs yielded that tidbit. Also, from Shakespeare?

“What’s past is prologue.”

(here)

If memory serves — it doesn’t — but tracking against the heavens, I rode a Laverda triple into near oblivion in 1981, and the tank badges survived another decade. Searching for interesting visuals, I stumbled across similar tank badges, stickers, and assorted other graphics, but for a slumbering marque, the price was too rich for me.

I wanted to play with the visual, and eventually, I printed out a copy of the old logo since the font and face of the brand’s name was as interesting as anything else, at least, to me.

I’ve long threatened to get the name “Laverda” tattooed over the scar on my arm, a secondary lasting reminder. Just never got around to it.

Yeah, I know a guy in Austin, I can hook you up. Hadn’t thought much about that brand, the marque, until this current mercurial-infused meditation.

The meditation on the font and face used for that tank badge and subsequent logos and branding for the company? Interesting in and of itself, as much from a design perspective as from a strict structural study. Identity?

Motorcycles Laverda Italy
Back-to-back against—
Moto Laverda Breganze

What’s with the Italian hand-crafted mechanics?

For several years, think the shop called “Doc’s,” there was a Ducati Super Sport, it was a 900, might’ve been a 750, but in either case, it was silver, and the fiberglass gas tank had an unpainted stripe running down the side, made it easier to see how much fuel was in the tank. It was a production race bike. In that center stripe, maybe two or three inches wide? Part of the manufacturing process, there was a fly, like a bug encased in amber, only this was part of the manufacturing process, and while weird, should that special attention to detail only found in the tiny, one-off brands and handmade machines.

Think of it as a handmade racer that had turn signals and kickstand bolted on as an afterthought, just so that a license plate could be attached. A real street racer?

So that explains the appeal, I would hope. I’m still toying with those images, and previously? Long-lost in a distant, discarded past.

Moto Laverda Breganze

It’s the logo itself, that tank badge. So-named because it was a metallic disc, fitted to the curves of the gas tank, held in place with some narrow, flat-head screws. Again, memory is suspect, at best, but that’s what I recall having left over, after the calamitous year. The errant folly of youth?

The logo and it wasn’t until I started casually looking around on the inter-webs did I grasp that the font, the typeface, used in that logo had some style. Then, too, it’s the simple color scheme, but that’s one I’m used to now, orange, white, green, much like my buddy’s Irish coloring, or, for me, the more locally common Mexican flag background. Seems about the same. Not looking this one up.

The simple design and artful font used for carving the brand’s name? Simple yet effective. Looking at that logo, thinking whether it should be the Moto Laverda Breganze or Motorcycles Laverda Italy, set up a question.

Motorcycles Laverda Italy

How would I style this, moving forward? For myself. As an internal reminder of years distant, and what I think of as a colorfully misspent youth.

Moto Laverda Breganze

Got it.

Moto Laverda Italia

Moto Laverda Italia