The client is a worldwide label in the fashion industry and is widely regarded as a manufacturer of stylish, high quality fashion accessories and personal effects. The client was developing a new range of personal luggage. The client did not have spare capacity in its own product development team and required a designer to assist.
The client had prepared a series of concept sketches and a description of the unique features the range would have. Their own manufacturing team would take the products into production. The design brief was to develop the sketches to a series of visual and mechanical prototypes for approval of the mechanical and visual characteristics of the concept. The range included a new style combination lock and the brief included designing a new mechanism for this.
The first stage was to design the necessary clips, badges and attachment mechanisms and then prepare visual and part working models at actual size for fitting to prototypes of luggage for catalogue photography. The second stage was to design and develop the combination lock mechanism with unlimited user set combinations to a proving model. This was built as a fully working 'see through' prototype and supported by working drawings.