A wooden folding floor table designed with inspiration/in accordance to Carhartt’s brand. A product born from a work-wear brand that, for better or worse depending on one’s perspective, has expanded into street wear and hipster culture.
DETAILS
Skills: Construction, Woodworking, Soft-Goods Fabrication, Shop Tools, Brand Identity
Delivery: Products Studio III
Duration: 5-6 weeks (Fall/Winter 2024)
How does it work?
Similar to a director’s chair, the legs are propped on top of the table in its folded position. You can store things on top of it whilst it is set aside like this. Then, unfold the legs to the bottom and wrap the fabric around each side. Snap into place.
With very limited time, I committed myself to this furniture project by being very organized and creating a schedule and timeline early on.
With my severely limited time frame and new-ness to woodworking (and almost zero experience making furniture), I knew I had to be incredibly organized. I did this by creating a very rigorous, thorough timeline for myself. It worked out incredibly well.
Decide which brand & product I am designing (for).
Sketch and make physical prototypes for my design ideas.
Finish up physical prototypes for ideas. Make a 1:1 scale model from cardboard, then a 1:4 scale balsa doll house model. Over weekend before week 4, go to Mars lumber to purchase wood.
Create construction and fabrication guide and re-make it until there are ideally zero gaps in my plan. Cut wood with chopsaw into pieces so it has time to warp.
Thanksgiving Break, I went home to see my family. I was strategic and planned accordingly so that I could use this break to my advantage by having my wood cut already and allow it to warp.
Fabricate entire table. I broke this down day by day based on my construction guide. I worked almost 8 hours a day each day for this week on fabrication. Finish for presentation at start of next week.
PROJECT PROMPT:
Create a product that is an extension of a brand’s existing product line or that acts as a new, independent product while still adopting the brand’s identity.
In this first stage of the project, I came up with the idea for the wooden floor table and chose the brand Carhartt. With this brand, I knew a few things that I would have to achieve with my table:
1. It had to fold.
2. It had to look like ‘Carhartt’ (in its classic utilitarian-ness and maybe even its new annoying ‘hipster-ness’ too).
3. I must use canvas duck fabric.
Why?
It folds because I couldn’t make a table that doesn’t fold when the brand’s clothing is meant for working. It just makes sense. The use of fabric was deeper than its contribution to the association of the color and material with the brand. It felt logical for the fabric to play a role in the product when Carhartt’s usual products mainly consist of clothing.
In order to ensure my success in an area I lacked experience, I made my construction plan as thoughtfully as I could. I wanted to try to tackle as many problems that I could before starting fabrication.
I also had to use this construction plan to get permission in the 3D lab for this more ambitious project.
Thanks to my earlier dedication to the timeline and construction plan, fabrication was potentially the easiest part of this entire project.