The focus of this project was to create a waterproof, floating soft cooler to expand and grow the product category range of the Bubba brand. The brand is known for its fun keg shaped design, oversized capacity, and insulated foam properties. This is a natural extension for the bubba brand and aims to leverage these consumer strengths into new usage occasions to create new experiences for consumers.

inspiration

Playful proportions, abstracted and soft forms, toyetic/character like characteristics, and flowing organic lines were the main inspiration for the Bubba branded soft cooler.

Created storyboards to walk through an example experience a consumer may go through when setting up and using the soft cooler. The original scope of the project was for the cooler to be inflatable, so the story boards depict how a consumer would inflate, fill and tow the cooler while floating on water. The scope was later changed in the program for the cooler to only float and no longer be inflatable due to cost and overall complexity.

Several rounds of concept sketches were developed to work through perceived float-ability, soft goods construction and overall aesthetic. The concepts needed to fit well within the Bubba brand and be very approachable. A lot of the concepts were not heavily keg inspired as there was a goal to see if another silhouette would work for the brand.

Rough prototypes were created with foam and parts of a sleeping pad to figure out a way to deploy the inflatable portion of the cooler and to see a scale mock up for can placement and spacing for the internal capacity of the cooler.

Worked through the construction of the cooler and how each component would come together through sketching and CAD development in SolidWorks. Renderings were created in Keyshot.

bfc