RCKZ – PRODUCT DESIGN IN A PHYSICAL WORLD.
The reason for our first foray into physical product design was because Loving sneakers is a messy thing – money wise and in terms of showcasing and in terms of storing. We set out to change the game and build a storage solution that met our standards. Because, either the storage was way to expensive or it was just downright lame, design wise.
Nearly 2 years in the making – for a box made of plastic? Well, um, yes. We expected the product to be flawless and therefore spent a lot of time having it produced the right way – in terms of design, pricing and producing itself: in Germany, not somewhere in China where we couldn’t check up on the various manufacturing states. Sure, choosing China as the location to mass produce would have made the final product less expensive.
But we had support local/regional on our minds.
FINDING THE MATERIAL AND FORM
First, we gathered ideas and inspiration on form, material, functionality and narrowed it down from there.
While exploring different approaches on the form factor, our mandatories we’d liked to meet, we narrowed down routes constantly.
PROTOTYPING THE BETA VERSION OF RCKZ.
When we settled on a design, we went into prototyping mode – made CAD drawings (we did this by hiring a freelance industrial designer) and prototyped the beta version of the box via 3D printing.
3D printed elements
MASS PRODUCTION
To reach this point, a lot of time passed. It is difficult as fuck, operating with polygons and have them produced in an affordable way AND meeting our quality standards.
BUILDING THE BRAND
Having a finished product in the making, we now switched roles and wore our client hat.
We wanted the branding to be simple yet playful, unique yet not interfering with the design of the box. We opted for bright colors, a unique spelling for ROCKS (we thought of the box resembling somewhat of a sharp-edged rock – since you’d naturally have more than one box, we opted for rocks which became RCKZ).
From there it unfolded with all things necessary:
a package, a website, a webshop, stickers, merchandise, Instagram.
SELLING AND SHIPPING THE PRODUCT.
Making up a new product idea, ideating the ideal form and materials needed and having the thing finally produced is just half the way.
No time to to breath, you know have to come up with either a retail store or a webshop and some packaging.
