My Custom Motorcycle Keychain

I recently purchased a motorcycle and wanted to customize it around a theme. I settled on making a custom keychain.

XIII. & Despair

The 13th card of the Major Arcana is Death. Most people would have a visceral reaction to this card, but rest assured, it’s almost never read literally; rather, it’s more commonly associated with a metaphorical end of an era, rebirth or a time of great change. At time of writing, I’m in a transitional stage of my life, graduating from university, waiting to start my professional career in robotics engineering. Just as the Grim Reaper, last of the horsemen, rides upon a pale horse, I’ve coincidentally chosen to ride a pale horse of my own.

Death flies a white rose flag (in most tarot decks) that represents beauty, purity and change. I thought it would be a nice subtle way to theme my bike around this tarot card without being too morbid. Using Inkscape, I meticulously recreated the rose as an SVG. I made the design geometrically perfect (the petals are radially symmetrical), while staying as close to the Rider-Waite design (pictured above) as possible. I’ve seen examples of other recreations the flag but I like my design the most because I reckon it’s immediately recognisable (at least to those in the know).

Ozymandias

Death’s horse is named Despair in the Darksiders Series (I haven’t played them yet), so I wanted to name my bike Despair as well. That then reminded me of a famous quote from Percy Bysshe Shelly’s poem Ozymandias¹:

I really like this quote on multiple layers:

1. Taken at face value, they’re the words of a mortal challenging the gods with what they’ve accomplished. Everyone loves a good underdog story.
2. With the context that the words are spoken (presumably) by an Egyptian king, they’re the words of a boastful leader taking full credit for the work of others. I think it’s important to acknowledge the work of individual artists and engineers (and etc.) that contribute to large projects.
3. When looking at the poem as a whole, the words take on irony because no matter how impressive of a legacy we try to leave behind, eventually everything we make will crumble to dust and be forgotten. It’s a nihilistic thought but it helps me put whatever I’m working on into perspective and shake off perfectionism. Nothing matters in the grand scale of the universe so focus on what’s good enough for now.

As for the font choice, I chose DIN 1451, a font whose variations are used for traffic signs all around the world. Legible and beautiful, I think it’s thematic for decorating a vehicle’s keychain.

Order up!

It always pleasantly surprises me when sellers offer customized items on Aliexpress. I’d assume most of the products they sell are cheap because they’re able to mass manufacture it but sometimes they’re also able to customize products for you while keeping costs down. You just tell them what you want through the messaging feature (doesn’t matter before or after purchasing). Sellers are usually very friendly, though sometimes I am skeptical whether they understand me or not (it seems a lot of sellers don’t speak English and use machine translation).

I ordered a polyester keychain with double sided vinyl transfer printing (I think that’s what I ordered).

Results?

I’m not sure if it’s as immediately recognisable as I’d hoped it’d be but as long as it means something to me, I’m happy with it. Also with a massive keychain like this, I’m hopefully not gonna lose it anytime soon. If you also have a keychain idea, I hope you also follow through because this was a pretty rewarding project for not too much money.