TOM BRIGGS

October 24, 2025

I (Marissa) made the trip out to Utah to watch and shoot Red Bull Rampage this year. While I was there, I had the opportunity to check out Szymon Godziek’s and Chelsea Kimball’s Specialized custom designed Red Bull Rampage bikes. The designs on these were brought to life by Tom Briggs, and I thought it would be interesting to learn about the inspiration and of the cool small details that make them so special.

As a lifelong mountain biker, Tom Briggs (TB) loves working with athletes to design something that uniquely represents them. Briggs was introduced to mountain biking as an early teenager in Santiago, Chile when he was gifted a bike by his father instead of the rollerblades he asked for. After graduating with the highest honors at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Briggs spent six years with Cervello. As a mountain biker at heart, he is now based in Vancouver, BC, and has spent the past six and half years as the Principle Concept Designer for Specialized —  meaning he is the boss in the graphics department.

Briggs says his favorite part of designing graphics is that the work he makes exists as a time stamp in the sport — it lasts forever.

CHELSEA KIMBALL’S BIKE

TB: We both really like metal and it’s sort of reminiscent of a lot of plants and stuff you see out here in the desert.

Chelsea: I do feel like it’s desert inspired and you have to be in the know to know what the design is. It being my name just makes me really happy but nobody knows that until we tell them.

TB: The graphic is the graphic on the back (of the shirt) but I’ve blown it up to basically wrap the entire bike with it. So it’s her name. It’s just cropped in a crazy way and then tried to incorporate a couple other small details. I put ‘Just Send It’ on the top tube there, kind of the wonky smiley face, it references like a bad stick and poke smiley face tattoo. I wanted to give it a little bit of, you know, flavor and not just make it too perfect.

Chelsea: Last year, I got this tattoo with Cami. ‘Just Send It’ My friend Kaylee did it at Rampage and I’ve said it a lot but that was the first time it was ever written.

TB: So I figured it was a good reminder when you’re sitting at the top of Rampage. I think that’s the whole idea.

SZYMON GODZIEK’S BIKE

TB: I put his name on the top and ‘Buckle Up’ The buckle up story comes from, what year did your helmet come off?

Szymon: That was 2018

TB: He was riding and crashed and he forgot to do his helmet up and I was watching the footage of it and you could see as he like crashed, he comes out of the dust and his helmet’s gone. Oh yeah and then we redid the Motorhead logo into having a full face.

Szymon: Especially for me ‘cause I always forget to buckle up and all the guys that know me, they laugh so much about it. They are like yes, that’s what you need. Hell yeah.

TB: On the inside of the stays we actually have ‘Trust Your Instincts’ as well.

Szymon: When you want to spin something crazy off, you just need to trust your instincts.

TB: When we were talking a lot about was kind of how he got to this point, so we took the backyard football pitch as the main inspiration. So you get the blocks, which are all kinds of the squares and stuff you can see along the side. Then with time, as you ride it over and over and over again, the blocks start to break down and shred and tear and that’s where you get all these little slash marks. So we when started talking, you would ask for a white bike initially, and it was kind of this idea where I wanted people to be able to sort of look at the bike and also see themselves init as well, so he can see himself in it.