Tyler Richardson is the creative force behind the striking helmet designs worn by Formula E race winner Sebastien Buemi. Here’s how he creates skid lid art, from photoshop to podium.

“No one wants a plain white helmet,” says Tyler Richardson. The New Zealand artist might be just 23 but he’s no stranger to the world of custom helmet design, having set up his Helmart business aged 13. He now paints helmets for the likes of Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Tom Blomqvist, and is known for the strong colours and attention to detail he puts into each design. However, if there could be said to be a conventional route into such a highly niche area of art, Richardson didn’t take it.

“I started racing go-karts when I was about eight,” he explains. “Mum and Dad took me all around the country, and we went to Australia a few times. It was always a fun thing – I never really looked past it to racing cars. One year, my parents promised me a new helmet if I did well in the national championship. It’s what every kid wants – a new Arai helmet.”

That featureless helmet would become Richardson’s first blank canvas. “I already had millions of drawings,” he laughs. “So I started experimenting with some vinyl offcuts that a local signwriter gave me. Every weekend at the karting track I’d have a different helmet design. Each time, it got better and more complex. The thing with stickers is that after the race you can just pull them off and start again. It was all about experimenting.”

Karting friends noticed the chameleon helmet and started asking for their own custom designs. At 13, Richardson decided it was time to make a business out of it. “I remember designing my own business cards, cutting them up on the guillotine and laminating them,” he says. “I made a sign to take to the track, too.”

As the artwork become more intricate, so too did the application of the vinyl. “I was soon stickering the whole helmet, which was taking a long time,” Richardson says. “I thought it was about time to step things up, and that meant learning how to paint.”

Years of using vinyl strips yielded valuable lessons for the second phase of Richardson’s helmet artwork. “The trick is all in the impact of the design,” he says., “You might spend five hours masking a helmet to paint it for 10 minutes. Those years of stickers taught me a lot about how to build up layers, borders and patterns.”

Making a full time job out of Helmart came sooner than anticipated. At 16, Richardson knew his career path and wanted to get on with it. He left school to spend a year working for a signwriting company, applying vinyl to cars, vans and buildings. “There wasn’t much to do with design, to be honest,” he says. “Mostly it was just cutting out a logo and sticking it on a van door, or giving a car a tint. I was still doing helmets at nights and weekends, for close friends.”

Whether it was a leap of faith or that he had more time to concentrate on the business, Richardson found that Helmart really took off once he’d left the signwriting company. Orders began flooding in from all over New Zealand and then Australia.

“That’s when I set my goal: I wanted to go big,” he recounts. “I wanted a helmet in F1. Just like drivers want to get to the top, that was my goal. It still is. I was thrilled to be working with Brendon Hartley when he did a test in 2012 with Mercedes GP in F1. In fact, I’m still working with Brendon today, which is pretty awesome: he’s now a factory Porsche driver in WEC.”

Swiss racing driver Sebastien Buemi spotted Hartley’s bold helmet designs and decided to try out Richardson’s talents. “I only found out about Seb’s helmet for Formula E testing at Donington Park a couple of weeks beforehand,” he says. “To then see him so quick from the outset and topping many of those test days was really rewarding!”

“Buemi’s helmet was one of my favourites from testing,” remembers Naomi Panter, Current E’s own design whiz. “It was particularly amazing up close. From a design point of view, it has bold application of pattern alongside a superb level of detail, which gives lots of layers. It’s hard to achieve all of that while working alongside the really strong Red Bull branding, but that helmet achieved it.”

A two-year working relationship has resulted, one that shows no signs of slowing down. Buemi won the 2014 WEC championship and the Punta del Este Formula E race wearing helmets designed by Richardson.

“Brendon and Seb get around four helmets a year,” Richardson explains. “I did two for Brendon in Jan, I’m working on his special Le Mans 24hr helmet now, and we’ll do an end of year one. Now that F1 has a rule of no changing helmet designs, it’s great that we can still play with the designs in WEC and in Formula E.”

The process

“Creating a custom helmet takes around 80 hours of hands-on work,” says Richardson. “That varies depending on the design, but a lot of time goes into it. It’s always worth it at the end though, when we end up with a piece of art that looks as good in motion as it does standing still.”

Richardson starts with a day or two of thinking time before sitting down at a computer to get a concept design hammered out in Photoshop. Inspiration comes from listening to music, mostly techno: “Different kinds of music have different effects on what I paint. It brings out different details.”

Real estate for sponsors starts the ball rolling. “With big name drivers, such as Seb and Brendon, a lot of the direction comes from the sponsors’ logos – you have to know where they will go, how big they’ll be, what colours they are,” Richardson explains. “Once I’ve put all the logos where they need to go, that gives me a framework to play around with. I usually do a side profile design, though sometimes I’m asked to supply a top and front view too. That all gets sent to the customer and sponsors, to make sure the positioning and colours are right and that they like the design. That initial work takes a couple of hours. Sometimes I’ll produce the initial concept, then go away and come back to it later, to see if it still works for me, before sending it on.”

“There are plenty of examples of other Red Bull drivers whose helmet designs don’t really work well with the branding,” says Panter. “Buemi’s is a great example of how the design can include sponsor logos in a cohesive manner.”

What’s important is to get the balance right between a helmet that has “wow factor” up close – achieved with intricate details – and one which is also clearly identifiable from the grandstands.

“I want it to look as good when you’re holding it in your hand as when it’s out on track,” says Richardson. “That comes from karting, really. All the kids are in identical karts, but parents on the other side of the track want to be able to see where their kids are. That calls for recognisable helmet designs that stand out. But drivers want to enjoy their helmets too, so I put the detail in so that a driver finds something new on the helmet, every time they take it out of the box.”

Those layers of details can be seen in Buemi’s helmets. “Seb’s helmet has Red Bull logos on the side, and then we echo those logos in blue and silver, faded into the helmet,” says Richardson. “There’s also Seb’s logo in there.”

The most attention grabbing part of Buemi’s helmet is the giant Swiss flag that dominates the top of the helmet. “Nationality influences the designs quite a lot,” says Richardson. “Most of the helmets will have a little flag next to their name. The great thing about the Swiss flag is it’s so symmetrical, so that was a great feature to highlight on top of the helmet. Within the flag you’ll see his logo and, behind that, more logos, and different types of red shading.”

“Within the Formula E paddock, Buemi and di Grassi are the best examples of incorporating nationality into helmet design in a really powerful way,” says Panter. “You can really see the intricate layers of design in both of those helmets. Buemi’s has a really well placed red flash of colour on the top, which gives the driver identity separate to the sometimes all-consuming branding of major sponsors.”

“The deeper the colours on the helmet, the easier the shot,” says Shiv Gohil, Current E’s resident photographer who provides race photos to Buemi’s e.dams-Renault team. “Seb’s helmet has a slight reflection in the finish so it doesn’t look like it’s been painted with conventional flat colours. It looks more futuristic, which suits Formula E. The red of the helmet looks amazing up close, and makes him really easy to spot on track, especially as the car he’s driving is predominantly blue.”

Once the concept is complete, then comes the tricky part: working out how to translate the Photoshop vision into painted carbon fibre. Just about everything on one of Richardson’s helmets is paint, not vinyl, including sponsor logos. “You can pretty much do anything with paint,” says Richardson. “But you have to be careful because most manufacturers will have a weight limit that restricts the amount of paint you can use.”

Buemi uses Bell helmets, which are sent to Richardson straight from the factory. Each arrives as a raw carbon shell. “I usually already have the shells before I’ve completed the design, so that I can get going as soon as it’s approved,” says Richardson.

If the design calls for a mirrored finish, then the helmet must be chromed first of all. “We’ve now got a machine to do that,” says Richardson. “We were sending them away to a company in Australia which was taking about four weeks, so it’s much faster now.”

Paint is next. “Base colours go first,” Richardson explains. “Then you add the little details, such as the sponsors’ logos, shading, patterns and intricate details.”

Sometimes those details are harder to apply. “I do a helmet every year for Macauley Jones, who’s from Australia,” says Richardson. “The first one we did had matte graffiti. The next one had 24 carat pure gold painted on under the logos. That was pretty insane.”

Then comes the all-important finish, which Richardson believes is one of the things that separates the wheat from the chaff of helmet designers. “The clear lacquer coats are added, and I give the helmet a glass like feel, so everything is smooth when you run your hand over it. You shouldn’t be able to feel any of the outlines or borders.”

“Something I pride myself on is going crazy on the detail,” he says. Some of those details include painting washers and visor hardware to match the main helmet design.

The finished product is photographed and also videoed before being dispatched. “That’s so important to sharing the artwork,” says Richardson.

It’s an involved process, and one which sometimes must be compressed to meet the demands of the racing world. “My favourite helmet of Seb’s so far is probably the one he wore in Miami,” says Richardson. “That one, I found out on Thursday that he needed it; I had to dispatch it to the Bell factory on Monday to reach him in time for the race. That meant working 19 hour days to get it done.”

Long hours are no shock to the system for Richardson though, who tends to work all day and late into the night. “I find I do my best designs late at night,” he says.

Richardson isn’t complaining though. He’s one of a very small group of full time custom helmet designers in the world, and his work is being used at the highest levels of motorsports. It’s not a bad life, he laughs: “You end up becoming friends with your customers. Plus I get to do what I love doing, every day. That’s pretty cool.”