I’ve been trying to find someone who would design a pair of sunglasses for me, but I am hoping to start off small, so I am looking for a designer who is indie, and does not charge a high budget for their clients’ projects, but also has experience with this line of products. Does anyone know any designer I could approach? Emails and websites would be great thanks.
You already asked this question and we answered.
R
Kind of amazed at the responses in that link. Let me just prove all of the moderators wrong with one thing.
Very nicely done.
But maybe you can enlighten us as to how the mods were wrong? A lot of investment, time, and overhead went in to bringing these products to market I’m sure. Sure, you can get designs for cheap, but the mods gave great advice on what else to consider beyond just the design of the product.
Of course there are always alternate routes to bringing products to market, so what’s the story here?
What is that proving?
R
Greenman knows what im saying and that is that there are so many ways to bring a product to market today that do not involve having retailers lined up, extensive R&D, tooling, etc. I just found the responses to be extremely condescending and short sighted. Sure, some random person with the user name " gameprogta4" doesn’t seem like a serious effort, but you made fools of yourselves and as moderators aren’t really helping anyone by shutting someone down and out. Is this how you would treat a client that also doesn’t understand the process of developing and launching a product? You’re responsible for the culture of this forum. Please consider that. Maybe gameprogta4 has deep pockets. Maybe gameprogta4 would like to learn about ID.
Let’s turn down the rhetoric.
I hardly think anyone made a fool of themselves, except maybe you being high and mighty. Original post asked a question. Reasonable responses were given. Nobody insulted the OP and useful links about the process was given.
Budget was $500-$1000. Go ahead, take the job and bring a product to market for that. Have fun.
R
Shwood still had a lot of investment. Great website with ecommerce $$$. If they are using alot of manual labor, they still need sanders, planers, saws, drills etc. $$$ If they hire manual labor they have to pay salaries $$$ If they invest in equipment to make the glasses, OMG, $$$$$$ Order fulfillment $$$
Basically, it’s expensive to get into manufacturing or import-distribution. Richard and Yo present the path of least resistance (get big order, get a bridge loan, ship ship ship). You can shift where you are spending your money, but at some point, you need a big pile.
$500-1000 might get you about 10 hours of a freelancers time. Most good ones won’t have time for this size project, so don’t expect to get someone with a ton of sun glass experience. 10 hours could be enough to get a basic computer render. Not anything that you can even prototype with, let alone get accurate factory quotes with.
That is a fair point, but remember, this is an Industrial Design forum, and Industrial Design is deeply rooted in designing for mass production and volume. To that, the mods responses were spot on, if you can accuse them of anything it would be for thinking too big.
Reality is that markets are evolving, tools, and modes of developing and marketing products have shifted to empower inventors and entrepreneurs more than ever before. Shwood’s venture is very entrepreneurial, perhaps all of their products are truly hand crafted, and that is a low volume / high premium business model that hopefully is working for them. Shifts in the luxury goods markets as of recent point to how important it is to be able to maintain a premium and exclusive offering to command high prices keeping the business profitable.
An alternative approach for the OP was to seek a designer willing to be a business venture partner and/or seek investors, but for that you need a great product idea and a business plan. The OP didn’t state he was looking to mass produce the sunglasses, just that he had an idea that he wanted to see visualized. So if anything he may want to work on his salesmanship to inspire a designer to come on board with him, but unless he has some connections, he may very well have to convince a less experienced designer to get involved. Maybe he had Kickstarter in mind to fund his idea?
When did gameprogta4 ever ask to have a product brought to market? For $500-$1000 I would gladly take some time to design a pair of sunglasses to a certain point.
I’m liking the lively discussion we have here!
R
He specifically asked to have them “designed, developed, and prototyped”.
He didn’t ask for a sketch, he asked for a concept, which has been refined and built - forgetting what his “new features” that he wanted added were, implying there was some level of development beyond your $12 pair of injection molded pharmacy glasses.
I don’t know about you, but for ~$300-600 after taxes you’re calling a bunch of professionals with years of experience fools? I’m not sure what you consider your time worth, but even if you assume an intern’s time is worth $12.50 an hour that is optimistically a weeks work, which is enough to crank out some sketches, maybe an illustrator rendering or a simple CAD model (not including any of the detailed work for mechanisms which would be much more time consuming).
No one was condescending, and anyone who has taken on work with clients knows that a client with a false expectation is bad for the industry. Just look at what happened to graphic design - now anybody can spend $50 on a logo design from 100 designers in Asia running stolen copies of Photoshop, 99 of who won’t receive a dime. It’s bad business.
ID is not a “cheap” labor cost. It’s fine if you want to take on a side project for a buddy pro bono or for a few dollars. But you can not run a business with the overhead of computers, expensive CAD and design software, materials, etc at a rate of $12.50 an hour.
I also am not sure why posting a link to a brand not personally related to the OPs project is proving anything?
If this was 2 years down the line and this is the mentioned eyewear prject which the OP has successfully stomped out of the ground for a grand… respect. Didn’t think that was possible.
Anyway, don’t really get your outrage here.
So what point would that be?
I PM’ed him with a suggestion that I’d do some sketches. No answer.