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Escape Smart Luggage by Frédéric Gooris |
Home > Winners > Design #63384 >Interview |
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FS: What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
FG: Inspired by the iconic travel trunks, ESCAPE is a contemporary Carry-On that doubles up as a light and self-charging mobile office for today's traveling business people.
FS: What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
FG: Traveling used to be about exploration and adventure, which is the exact opposite of today’s stressful and time inefficient business traveling. We imagined a different travel experience. We want to see less weary business travelers and bring pleasure and efficiency back into the travel experience by creating an innovative and elegant carry-on.
FS: What are your future plans for this award winning design?
FG: Smart luggage has in most cases been reduced to whamming a battery and/or Bluetooth onto a suitcase. Being “Smart” is about so much more, and Escape has just laid the foundation of redefining modern smart traveling.
FS: How long did it take you to design this particular concept?
FG: From brief to final product it took us about 1.5 years.
FS: Why did you design this particular concept? Was this design commissioned or did you decide to pursuit an inspiration?
FG: Stevenson of Rollogo came to me with a working prototype of a power generating spinner wheel. It was mounted on an ordinary carry-on. The final product did not convince him: “I wouldn’t buy it, so how can I expect someone else wanting to buy it?”. He asked to create a “better” design. What he really meant was to find a concept in which a power-generating wheel would make perfect sense – rather than being a gimmick – and to come up with an attractive aesthetical language that clearly communicates the concept.
FS: Is your design being produced or used by another company, or do you plan to sell or lease the production rights or do you intent to produce your work yourself?
FG: The product was designed exclusively for Rollogo.
FS: What made you design this particular type of work?
FG: When do you need your mobile devices to stay charged? Not for your family travels. But when you travel for work, the batteries drain fast when you need to stay connected all the time. So, the business travelers were the obvious beneficiaries for the power-generating wheels. Anyone of us who is one the road for work knows how much time is wasted, so getting some work done comfortably anywhere, anytime sounds like a dream. The link with the iconic travel trunks was quite natural really. The perfect combination of a carry-on and mobile office became our ultimate goal that we - together with Rollogo - turned into a reality.
FS: Where there any other designs and/or designers that helped the influence the design of your work?
FG: Yes, the old iconic travel trunks of Louis Vuitton and the likes have always fascinated me for their ingenuity. The trunks were not just a case to transport your stuff from A to B. It was a part of your home, each and every single one personalized. No matter where you decided to stay, you could unfold your home. This is in sharp contrast with today’s suitcases which are soulless shells to ship your belongings from one place to the next.
FS: Who is the target customer for his design?
FG: Today’s business travelers.
FS: What sets this design apart from other similar or resembling concepts?
FG: Most smart luggage is so called smart because a power bank with Bluetooth has been whammed onto it. In our humble opinion, this is not particularly smart. We went back to the drawing board not to redesign the carry-on, but to reinvent it based on the needs of the business travelers.
FS: How did you come up with the name for this design? What does it mean?
FG: Not so long ago, travelling was synonymous for total freedom, break away from the constraints from everyday life. Today we are more mobile then ever, and yet we very dependent on our mobile devices. Their limited battery capacity fills us with anxiety, not knowing where or when we can have our next charging session. To regain that freedom we crave for and be able to truly “escape”, ESCAPE was designed to give business travelers full peace of mind when on the road.
FS: Which design tools did you use when you were working on this project?
FG: We used an array of tools, ranging from 2D drawings, paper patterns, 3D CAD drawings all the way to working on physical models, improving one sample at a time.
FS: What is the most unique aspect of your design?
FG: The combination of power-generating wheels and the unique space (re-)organization overthrew any conventional construction scheme. We had to rethink the product from scratch and the result is a very unique carry-on, one that shows we can travel differently.
FS: Who did you collaborate with for this design? Did you work with people with technical / specialized skills?
FG: We collaborated very closely with Rollogo’s electronic engineers and luggage makers. The very productive forth and back between our vision and their expertise was the catalyst that turned Escape into a reality.
FS: What is the role of technology in this particular design?
FG: Technology started the project and delivers one of its main features: the power generating wheels. But technology is not dominating in the final result, it is present in the background, delivering the benefits we’d expect without the need of the user to adapt to the technology.
FS: Is your design influenced by data or analytical research in any way? What kind of research did you conduct for making this design?
FG: Yes, we did a lot of analytics on the electronic parts to ensure the performance is not just a marketing gimmick but lives up to people’s expectations. Both Rollogo and Studio Gooris are based in Hong Kong, which is a city many people travel from and to. Many of our friends are very frequent flyers. They became our focus group. We checked our design progress regularly with them to ensure we were providing accurate answers to the aspects of traveling that they experienced as problematic or annoying. They also tested the prototypes to get first hand feedback before going to market.
FS: What are some of the challenges you faced during the design/realization of your concept?
FG: The first big challenge came from the new space organization - e.g. the top compartment -that changed the construction so profoundly that any traditional construction scheme went straight out of the window. We literally had to start from the skeleton up again. Since there was no proven template to draw from, we had to turn to the process of trial-and-error, which involved countless prototypes.Another challenge was the gearbox in each wheel. When a fully loaded trolley was dropped, the gears could get damaged. To avoid that, we developed a lightweight suspension system that protects the gears and also makes for a smoother ride in rough terrain.
FS: How did you decide to submit your design to an international design competition?
FG: Design competitions are an excellent way of validating the design and to gain wide visibility.
FS: What did you learn or how did you improve yourself during the designing of this work?
FG: It was not the first time I designed luggage, but the first time we developed a luggage design from scratch into a real product. It was a very enriching experience, and some of this knowledge has already been carried over into designs of new product categories.
FS: Thank you for providing us with this opportunity to interview you.
A' Design Award and Competitions grants rights to press members and bloggers to use parts of this interview. This interview is provided as it is; DesignPRWire and A' Design Award and Competitions cannot be held responsible for the answers given by participating designers.
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