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After gaining good blog traction, the Orp bicycle horn (which we wrote up here) recently surpassed its Kickstarter target of $90,000, and is on the way to 100 large. We're following it up here not only to inform you of the funding success, but to illustrate how well Kickstarter can be wielded by a veteran industrial designer with a popular product idea.
Tory Orzeck and his team have continued updating the Orp's project page, showing the process shots we love to see, along with updated renderings and diagrams that provide the quiet assurance that these guys know what they're doing. We dug seeing things like what appears to be a 3D-printed mold used to cast silicone models for testing, and copious shots of them working out the kinks of their "engineering mule."
While upstart designers may not have Orzeck's resources—he's co-founder of the Portland-based design firm Fuse—every would-be Kickstarter can learn from Orzeck and co.'s example. Every greenlit Kickstarter project consists of a cool idea for a product that a subset of the population wants, and we see a lot of pitches heavily focused on the "cool" part, without a lot of reassuring follow-through; but the Orp team, by being unafraid to make their process transparent and really taking the time to document their labors, points towards what we think is a more certain path to Kickstarter success. Instead of merely saying "Isn't this cool, don't you want one?" the project page gives the impression of "We already know the idea has merit, and this project will happen. Get in on it if you want." Speaking of which, there's four days left to pledge.
Comments
Do you think there is room in there for a tilt sensor so it will go off if you get knocked over and don't have time to hit the horn?
i think the question here is how many budding designers have the funds and resources to get into actual product development (as seen in the above images) before finding an investor (Kickstarter in this case). Most brilliant ideas get chocked at this pre-investor stage only.
As far as funds for budding designers goes, the sketch models and prototyping you see above isn't extremely expensive. Modeling foam is not majorly costly. Scrap wood too. Shapeways has made printing things that really need to be printed more affordable. Most young designers have the hand tools to work models from school.
Most of it comes down to sweat equity, that is, investing your own time. I'm sure Tory wasn't always well funded and worked very hard on projects with a limited budget. Maybe us young designers can't make it look as easy but it definitely is something to shoot for when putting together a Kickstarter project. or any project for that matter. It's an integral part of the design process.
Well said Anthony!