Solorka: Case Study.

Duration: 

September – December 2021

Objective:

The purpose of this project was to Use 3 design trends that we were given, pick 2 and create an original product that utilizes both of those trends. The 3 trends I received were Plant-Based meat alternatives, USB devices, and professional athletes making political statements. Of those, I chose USB devices and plant-based meat alternatives to build my unique product.

Research:

The main bulk of the research that was done was researching plant-based meats and USB devices. This gave me a good idea of why people use both of these different products and an understanding of what I could possibly start to make. Once I came up with my product concept from there most of my research focused on solar products and also kitchen appliances. This gave me an understanding of what was on the market and how I could make my product fit a niche that has not already been filled.

Concept Development:

Conceptualizing this project was quite challenging initially. Given the nature of the two design trends, they didn’t go together very well with one being a food product and another electrical product. My initial ideas all revolved around some kind of USB grill for people to grill Beyond burgers and such. However, that didn’t seem like the best there was. That’s when I decided to not look at both of the trends literally and look at the reasons behind why people use them. That allowed me to broaden plant-based meat alternatives to being just environmentally friendly. As I found in my research one of the biggest reasons people eat plant-based meat is due to environmental concerns. With this, I came up with a Solar Powered window product with a battery pack that can easily be installed in the window of your kitchen to run a multitude of different cooking products that all run/charge off of USB and USB-c cables.

Product Development: 

The first thing I worked on was conceptualizing a symbol for the company. I did this by drawing dozens of different ideas going off of different keywords and principles that I wanted the mark to follow such as, repetition and energy, power and momentum, and reusability and energy amongst a few others. Through this, I slowly started to formulate and narrow down a mark that got the message of my company across.

After this, I moved on to drawing and conceptualizing what my product was going to look like. This actually flowed very nice for me as I had a pretty clear image in my head as to what I wanted it to look like and how I wanted it to function, as a kitchen appliance as well as a product you could take camping, use for survival, or be used in emergency/disaster situations.

Once those product designs were finalized I moved into creating my 2D marketing and 3D packaging. For my 2D marketing, I decided the best thing would be a brochure to be used in an event/conference type situation. The brochure had descriptions and pictures of the different products as well as our company goals and what the company is all about. For the 3D packaging, the only thing to really do for this was a box for shipping/shelving. In order to keep with the company values and theme I decided that this box was to be made out of mushroom packaging, therefore, making it entirely biodegradable, 100% sustainable, and maintaining the lowest carbon footprint possible.

Finally, the last part of this project was to build a website. This was a very straightforward website with a product store, links to socials, and ways to contact customer service if you need help with an order or are having technical problems with the product itself.

Typefaces: 

Original Typefaces: Raleway, Futura, Kinesis Pro 

New Typefaces and Typefaces used: Adobe Arabic(for symbol), Raleway(website/brochure)

Lessons Learned:

Over the course of the project, I learned the value of taking time to conceptualize. I also did not realize just how difficult it is to come up with a truly great symbol for a product that can communicate what the product is without being overly complicated with the added pressure of making it scalable to various sizes. I spent 3 weeks drawing dozens of sketches before I finally landed on the perfect one and it looked nothing like the first one that I drew. I also learned the importance of building a roadmap for your project. before moving on to the next part of the project I always made sure I had at least a pretty solid idea of what I was going to be doing 2 even 3 steps later in the project so if I got stuck I could rotate to another part and start fresh. This allowed me to take my time on every part without stressing out too much with creative block. This project was fantastic and it really is so cool to build a product front to back and conceptualize every detail of it.

Programs:

Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Marvel App