Another 2 days this week. Tuesday Josh approached me and told me that there was a SMU* that needed to made for their client in Puerto Rico. I guess they have a client that buys a good size supply of product every year for Puerto Rico. Josh gave me 2 backpacks that fit the price point and told me to design a similar pack and then come up with a few design options on that pack. Creative freedom! Creative freedom is a little harder than I thought. Ha! It took me most of the day to come up with a pack design. I haven't ever designed something on Illustrator that needed to be produced in 3D later. It was a little hard to visualize the design. I drew the front view first and then realized it couldn't be made as I started drawing the side view. I'm sure with practice that will be easier to see. A backpack, after all, is basically just a bunch of different shaped squares. At the end of the day I had the pack done and also had 2 basic designs in the works. Nothing I was that excited about, but a good start.
Wednesday I went in hoping to get some feed back on what I started the day before but Josh was out, having a personal day. As I arrived I was able to talk a little with Paul. Paul is the shoe designer at Element. I have an interest in shoe design so it was nice to pick his brain a little. He mentioned that he had a background in industrial/product design. The thing he pointed out was kind of what I was talking about in my earlier blog... understanding the manufactures process for making the shoe. Paul let me look at shoe he designed and gave me a few websites to check out that he liked. Good stuff.
I ended up working with Heather most of the day. She had me work on the girls backpacks for the SMU for Puerto Rico. She was a lot more structured with what she wanted than Josh was. Josh just said go for it while Heather gave me two already designed packs to work with. She also directed me towards a bunch of graphics to use on the packs as well as certain colors she wanted to see them in. It was actually a helpful process. She gave good feedback about the stuff I produced and pointed out that SMU designing is a little different than normal products designed for Element. SMU is designed for a customer with their needs in mind vs. my own creativity.
Vocabulary: SMU (Special Make Up or Special Mark Up) - a product produced for a specific customer, independent of the normal line produced.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment