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The Lollygagger Basket was an introduction to the process of designing a product with brand cohesion and expansion in mind.
The prompt for this assignment was to create a product or family of products that felt consistent with a brand of our choosing while simultaneously expanding the company’s product offerings.
Before starting my sketching and ideation process, I needed to understand Loll Design as a company and how it chose to differentiate itself from its competition.
By sourcing publicly-accessible information from its website and making educated assumptions based on its marketing and promotional materials, I was able to create a company description.
From this base description, I created a more visual research packet which you can view below.
Who they are:
“A designer/manufacturer of durable, all-weather, outdoor furniture and accessories made with recycled plastic—mostly from single-use milk jugs. Using thoughtful, original designs and unique materials, Loll creates innovative, fun and high-quality products proudly crafter in the USA.”
Target Market:
“Loll’s Designs makes outdoor furniture for the ‘modern lollygagger,’ people who play hard, work hard, relax hard, and appreciate the outdoors.”
Loll’s target market appears to include people who value fashion as much as they value environmentally friendly business practices. Their advertisements and promo videos often appear to be targeted toward high to extremely high salaried buyers with young families as well as empty nesters. They prefer to purchase products that are built to last and don’t require constant or grueling maintenance.
Buyers of Loll’s products are responsive to emotional appeals and prefer companies that have a sense of character, humor, and color to them. Buyers tend to be outgoing, exuberant, and looking to make a statement. Simplicity is a major plus as well both in construction and overall appearance.
Unique Selling Points:
Markets:
Outdoor furniture, tables, planters, storage, and accessories (cushions, birdhouses, fire rings, and dog bowls).
Design Language:
Flat-packed design that leans towards geometric architectural design. Overall design appears to blend the bauhaus simplicity with the flat surfaces, square shapes, and distinct colors of the De Stijl movement.
The design of the furniture favors hard edges flat faces to achieve an energetic yet gentle appearance. Colors: Gray (dark/light), Lime Green, cream white, black, red, muted orange, navy blue, and baby blue.
Mission Statement:
Loll Designs uses thoughtful original designs and unique materials to create innovative, fun and high-quality products proudly crafted in the USA. We enhance people, planet and company in everything we do.
Using my research packet as a guide, I began the sketching process.
In order to have a better understanding of the brand’s design language, I created a family of products that emulated aspects of their existing product line.
Ultimately, I decided to pursue the basket concept as I felt the design best suited the company’s playful essence and its emphasis on creating products that could adapt based on user needs.
Creating the foam core model significantly expedited the 3d modeling process as it provided extremely useful insights into the model’s overall assembly and the forms of each individual part.
Two models were created for this project: one to be used for renders and another to be used as reference for creating the CNC toolpath.
Using the CNC toolpath created from the 3d modeling process, I machined out the basket’s parts from a half inch sheet of plywood.
After the cutout process, I went ahead and sanded down the edges of each part to emulate the rounded edges of Loll’s products. I made sure each part fit snugly.
I also sanded the surfaces of the parts smooth to prepare them for painting.
After the refinement process was completed, I completed the model by adding a coat of paint of a similar color as those used on Loll Designs furniture pieces.
The model was then assembled through the use of wood adhesive rather than screws due to prototype turnover time constraints. Given more time, I plan to refine the model further.
Further development plans include a more permanent construction via removable screws and a more secure solution for the attachment of the basket’s handles.
