Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Bag Prototyping and Design

The sun is finally warming up and the rain and snow of last week are disappearing. It's been in the 60s several days this week, which feels like spring for a change. I've had a fair number of design prototype submissions work, and several clients agreed to let me show you their work. One of my favorite submissions was a set of 4 different bag designs for a company out of Durham for the light kindle.

I had a yard and a half of each of two color fabrics and 1 day to design it. The selection was a french toile and soft black lining. After looking up the dimensions, I created a block pattern and cut up my pieces. You can see the resulting pieces. Didn't look like much at that point. Thankfully, as one of my old instructors told me, fabric is about the magic of creating a 3D creation out of a 2D design. There's a lot of truth to that still although computers are changing the game. I often wonder if in another decade they will still have you create slopers and blockers to design stuff. Several hours later, you could see the final project.

Unfortunately, these did not make it out of the design cutting floor, we ended up going with another model as the handles were too long, but we landed the contract. Due to client confidentiality, I can't show you what we're working on now. I thought I would show these this week as an example of design submissions and how not everything is perfect, more a work in progress. And that's ok. I think too many designers expect drawing to be perfect right off the bat when instead, it takes several runs often to get things right. Problem shooting is important.

Well, let me run. I have more designs to do this week and hopefully the weather will hold to put up some of our own bag. Next, I am going to show you how to do a custom pool table cover I did with a friend over the weekend. I broke it down with how to instructions so you can do your own. You will need roughly 1 yard per foot of the pool table. For example an 8 ft table would take 8 yards, and a 9 ft. table would take 9 yards.

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