BIG AGNES
Summer, 2019 I interned with Big Agnes as a Product Developer.
Big Agnes is located in Steamboat Springs Colorado. Right in the Mountains- and they are proud of it. Big Agnes makes durable back country gear that gets you excited about sleeping in the dirt and being outdoors.
Working with Big Agnes's Product Designers and Developers, I was able to learn and participate in the production tents, sleeping bags, pads, chairs and apparel. I worked with color, design concepts, prototypes, costumer interfacing, sourcing and learning more about integrating circular economy principles into design.
Below I have a collage of some of the projects I was able to work on with the team.
COLOR RESEARCH
An ongoing project I helped with, was doing color trend research for upcoming color pallet inspiration for final production. Looking at concept prediction charts, fashion runway and color website to produce a color story for our upcoming line of gear.
From here I worked on color mood boards to present the colorways to the designers at Big Agnes. They helped me narrow it down and worked as team to decide what colors worked best with what products.
COLOR BOARDS
From the color research I was inspired to collaborate with earth tones and vibrant pops of color. These are some of the mood boards for different categories in the upcoming season.
From here I was able to play around with color and add it to existing Big Agnes products to get a feel for color on product. This helps to get a better visualization of the application of color.
Once we picked the colors for each fabric, lab dips are requested. Lab dips are the coloration of certain fabric to make sure it matches the pantone color requested for color quality assurance.
Bill Of Materials
I also learned the importance of using Bill of Materials (BOM's) to help color the apparel line.
The BOM's are the ingredient list for every product. It includes material code, placement, supplier and color code.
The BOM's are what the team uses to track and communicate every detail of a product. The BOM is the product DNA
Development
Part of the development process that I helped Big Agnes with, was checking in product. I measured and weighed a variety of prototype sleeping bags and tents that came in. Checking each product very closely to make sure the product matches the tech pack and hit spec for measurements requested.
This information is useful for the costumers and also for communicating with the manufacture. Making sure your product is made correctly to keep your products top of the line.
Because English is often the second or third language spoken by the factory, pictures, numbers, words and illustrations are often used together for clear communication of product development.
After taking measurements of the sleeping bags that came in. I wrote in comments to the manufacture, letting them know things that needed to be changed to make our product ready to sell.
This process is done for every single product, each sample round. Often products need between 1-5 samples before commercialization.
One pocket made for a tent came in too big, I pinned and measured to record what changes need to be done, so our supplier could properly execute the next prototype.
This was then recorded in the tech pack and put in our comments to send to the manufacture.
Apparel prototypes are fit on specific people for ensuring comfort, and consistent patterning. Marking and pinning help communicate changes to suppliers.
Tech packs and Construction Standards
I helped re-build tech packs and create illustrations for construction standards.
This bag was needed to be redesigned to separate into a smaller carry bag. After taking apart and reconstructing we came up with this idea to present to management and approve to send to our manufacture to create.
Construction standards are illustrations of photos taken to correctly communicate with the supplier how to develop our products. I was able to build a library of these for the Big Agnes team to use in their future tech packs.
CIRCULAR DESIGN
I wanted to focus on a project that was based around sustainability. Circular design focuses on a products life from cradle to grave.
The purpose of the project was to re-think a Big Agnes product with a circular design approach, identify circular opportunities in the life-cycle of the product and perform alternative material assessments and cost benefit analysis to create targeted redesign recommendation.
I created a hypothetical situation to present to the team, consisting of a already existing sleeping bag in the Big Agnes line. Using the tools and knowledge I learned from the internship I was able to apply this to this project and work with the team for ideas and innovation in the circular design mind set.