OVERVIEW:
My first design process experience when I and my colleague Egle explored different ways to develop a new product and establish distinguished clothing brand.
SITUATION:
Back in 2016, we have noticed that Lithuanian consumers were exhausted form all the new design brands which were founded and disappearing every week. They were prompted to consume more and more in the way to support Lithuanian design development.
After talking with some consumers and well-established brand owners, I and my colleague Egle noticed an opportunity to challenge the market.
GOAL:
We set a goal to collaborate with local businesses and create more innovative, better quality clothing.
MY ROLE:
Explore different ways to develop design idea
Find/invent an easier way to produce the final product.
Negotiate with partners
Built a distinguished brand identity to communicate with customers and partners.
PROCESS:
We sat down and started to sketch the first ideas about what product we should design. By that time I was very interested in neoprene material, so we have decided to look for some inspiration and explore opportunities with this material.
After some research, we have decided to design a bomber jacket but still did not know how it could be different from all the bomber jackets in the world. We conducted a competitive analysis to find out what other clothing brands are creating with this material. While we were checking many other designer works, my colleague Egle discover old jacket with embossed words on the chest. We decided to tweak this idea and make embossing logo on the back.
FIRST CHALLENGE:
After a Eureka moment and with the final idea in our minds we decided to try to make embossing design detail on my old jumper. We used home iron and almost burn the whole house, but managed to find out that neoprene is not easy going material and we need professional help.
We have conducted extra research to find out more about material and Lithuanian companies which could offer to emboss. In the meantime, we tried a few different ways to make similar to embossing design details.
MORE CHALLENGES:
We have contacted and visited a few printing companies which were providing embossing services, but most of them rejected our request and did not even want to try as long as it was unknown material. Luckily, we negotiated with one company to give a try.
With professional embossing equipment, we tried a few ways to achieve our idea, but neoprene material still resisted to embossing. The place where the press was embossing the detail quickly returned to the same position by leaving just slightly visible borders. Our partner implied that our idea is impossible and offered to choose another material. We knew in our mind that we just need to try more, so we negotiated to try it a different way and press with a special sticker on another side. We founded the way to make our design detail.
DEVELOPMENT:
As long as on the jacket back we needed to add a special sticker to make embossing detail, we decided to add a lining for our hi-fidelity prototype and hide that part. We needed to test our prototype with different people to find out that neoprene’s stitches are irritating and need to be hidden too. For our final product, we added full lining which made our jacket super soft to wear.
DELIVER:
We collaborated with local sewing company, our printing partners and produce first Bonboz collection, We decided to add more colours to develop brand identity and diversity. For every colour, we set a different role.
KEY LEARNINGS:
As it was my first physical product design project my key learnings are tremendous, however some of them:
From my colleague I learned how not give up on your idea unless you tried all the ways to make it happen
How to negotiate with your partner to achieve the best results with the cheapest price in the quickest time possible.
The more you try the more you learn how to and where to improve.
CONCLUSION:
It was one of the most challenging moments in my life I am glad that we did not give up till the time we finally achieved our goal.
Project Tags
Companies
Bonboz
- Fashion and Textiles