An idea born on a trip to Costa Rica, Wings became a year long, multidisciplinary project to design and build a BMX bike travel bag for Terry Adams, professional flatland biker. Through the combined efforts of many, many talented people, Terry’s bag was realized in the summer of 2018 and served as my senior capstone.
This is Terry - he rides a bike like it’s not a bike for a living. And he’s great at it. One of the best.
Long story short, traveling with a bike kind of sucks, and on top of the hassle, airlines hike up the luggage cost to bring one. So BMX guys stow their rig in “golf bags” because for some reason those fly without the added fees.
Problem: There aren’t many options out there and the options aren’t great.
Solution: Design a new one… with options
A bit of inspiration in terms of materiality, style, craft, and color
At the beginning of this project, I knew close to nothing about BMX and the equipment associated with it. So with the help of the internet, I put together this diagram (for me more than anyone else really).
These guys didn’t pick the easiest of hobbies. Not only is traveling with a bike a hassle due to its size and configuration, but it’s expensive.
After doing a little research on Red Bull as a brand, I discovered that most of their luggage/baggage is contracted through Ogio, a large-scale bag maker founded in Carlsbad, CA.
This in turn called for an analysis of both brands.
As research wrapped up and ideation kicked off, Terry dropped in to do a full teardown of his rig from start to finish (a process that he goes through every time he travels).
Watching this process was incredibly insightful - it revealed his habits, his flow, his struggles - all of which influenced the final design.
During his visit and before he could put it back together, we took his bike parts hostage for a volumetric study. This exercise gave us a better understanding of exactly what we were packaging.
These drawings later turned into full sized models.
Sketch, sketch, sketch, sketch, sketch.
This ideation process was a bit different from those I had done prior. As I went, I would send “rounds” of them to Terry to check out. He’d make some comments, pull out his favorites and nix others.
Once a design was chosen, the concept was adjusted and filled out. Internal layout became more of a factor, as did proxemics as it related to the bag’s features.
The base materials were decided upon, costed, and sourced. A heavy, charcoal polyester, a british tan leather, and a black oxide brushed aluminum.
This render represents so many weeks of work: the research and observation, the ideation, committee meetings, volumetric studies… all of it culminated into this small image… and nothing tangible even existed yet!
With a clear picture of the end goal, I moved into small scale modeling. In retrospect, I should’ve skipped this step and just started big. Other than some sewing practice and many sleepless nights, the miniature didn’t prove to be all that valuable. Either way, lessons learned!
But on the other hand, it made for some really great photos and Terry seemed to like it a lot.
The small scale model and exhibit served as my final project before graduation, but the work was nowhere near done. A team was assembled to work through the summer to realize the bag - a team of incredibly talented designers that I was excited to be a part of.
Kelsey Kenney, Hannah Rossler, Ciara Sanders and myself worked tirelessly for 2 months creating full scale volumetric models and deriving flat patterns, tweaking and improving the design as we went along. Although the concept started as mine, it wouldn’t have amounted to the bag it was without those three kickass women designers. The final piece is just as much theres as it is mine.
We also had a fearless leader throughout the process: Adam Feld. Our professor by day and project manager by night, I’m not sure when Adam slept.
And then the day finally came. With Patti Dunn and Tchoup Bags in New Orleans, LA as our partner, we set out to do the thing - to bring this long anticipated product to life. Over the course of 12 hours, we pushed and pushed and came out on the other end with something to be proud of: the one and only bike bag of its kind. Wings
I can’t speak for the rest of the team, but browsing through Instagram stories and seeing a product you designed pop up… that was the moment.