A trend, currently set by some top German and Danish frame designers, is to keep their designs simple, with clean lines, light but still extremely robust and strong. 3 companies in particular stand out: ic!berlin, MYKITA from Germany and Lindberg from Denmark. All three companies not only design their frames, they also manufacture them in their respective countries. Is alone is already somewhat against the trend, because many frame design companies have their designs made in Japan or China.

For this little exercise I have selected one frame from each one of these three companies. It almost appears as if they had the same brief and still they have come up with totally different solutions to the brief. I guess this brief could have been to design and produce a frame that:

• is cool
• is extremely light
• is very strong, and
• uses no welds, screws or rivets

All three have come up with stunning solutions. They all use strip metals that is being cut and bent into shape. The wonderful thing about strip metal construction is that one can do without screws, welds or rivets because the whole front or temple can be made from one sheet. Apart from this it adds incredible strength and flexibility to the overall design.

Although all three frames are very light, the winner in the lightness category would have to be Lindberg. Lindberg only use Titanium for their frame manufacturing and so their Strip frame is also made from a Titanium sheet. The other two, MYKITA and ic!Berlin have traditionally used stainless steel for their creations. Although steel is heavier than Titanium, due to the fact that the steel frames are thinner, there is in fact not much difference in the overall weight of the frames.

Where the frames differ most is in the way they have approached the temple hinges. Traditionally most frames on the market these days use male/female hinge combinations. Unfortunately one has to use a screw to keep these hinges together, so this traditional solution was no option for any of  these designers.

In the case of the MYKITA and ic!Berlin frames the hinge has a double function as they also incorporate the rim-lock. The rim-lock is the part of a metal frame that can be opened so that lenses can be inserted or removed safely. Again, traditional frame design uses screws to lock the lenses into place.

Lindberg has found a different solution. They incorporated their rim-lock into the pad arm construction. The pad arms are the small holders on either side of the nose that hold the soft silicon nose pads.

All three frames also use silicon covers for at the end of the sides, making them very comfortable to wear.

So, which one is my favourite? hard to say. The quality of manufacture is outstanding for all. They are all incredibly light and strong. I guess you must then look at the “coolness” factor and in my opinion the coolest design from an aesthetic view would have to be the MYKITA.