After my earliest crude prototypes were built and tested, it was time to see where I could take this idea of portable gear storage. This part of the design process is fast and loose, aiming to elaborate on the initial concept. There’s plenty of MacGyvering like the first protos, but then I layer in all the tools and materials I have hoarded in my studio or can get my hands on. It’s blue sky country. This is the part where all the ideas that have been lurking in the depths boil up to the surface. All the non-linear thoughts get together and party. It’s messy. Good messy.
I continued to make, buy and modify different bags and boxes. Trying to figure out different ways to make usable prototypes; bending aluminum as a rim and putting it in a dry bag, stitching styrene sheet into the bottom of a tube of fabric, using a thermoformed piece of foam from another bag as a lid and a bottom.
I took deep dives into the corners of the internet to see if there is anything similar to what I was imagining, and if there was, synthesizing it my vision to make it better; more usable, more durable, more of a system.
This also lead me to some interesting worlds that I had only ever been superficially aware of, from lean manufacturing to intermodal transportation, #vanlife to Mary Kondo, and even Martian exploration.
Each new day of the vision quest took me to a new realm. It hooked me with paradox of thinking of everything I liked and had learned about storing and transporting my gear while simultaneously challenging myself to forget everything I knew about it.
The process started with the tools, materials and concepts that I knew, but quickly shifted to how to build what I don’t know, so down the rabbit holes I went.
But that’s for part 3. See you next week.
-Tony
