A South Australian designer has come up with new a product to take the frustration out of taking notes and sketching artwork.
Darren Yeow, an Adelaide video games concept artist now living in Melbourne, has designed the Nomad art satchel – an innovative shoulder bag which doubles as a portable table for drafting sketches and taking notes, regardless of location or weather.
Using a crowdfunding website, Yeow managed to raise more than $50,000 online in the first 24 hours of the Nomad’s launch.
His goal was to raise $30,000 over 30 days, but in less than a week he’s clocked up over $70,000.
Yeow attributes his success to engaging his online network of artist colleagues around the globe over several months to help consult on the project and to actively follow the prototyping process.
By the time the Nomad was ready to be manufactured, a large base of online supporters was ready to pounce.
“When it was launched, it felt like a great release,” he said.
The Nomad’s shoulder sling system allows the artist or note taker to do their work standing or sitting and with their right hand or their left.
Other functions of the satchel include multi-functional storage with water-resistant zips and rubber-backed ballistic nylon to keep paper, artwork and materials safe from the elements. A related tripod system can be connected for longer seminars or sketching sessions.
Yeow had his eureka moment while suffering the day-to-day difficulties of concept art: spending hours in public spaces battling wind, rain and arm fatigue to get ideas sketched and safely back to the studio.
“In order to sketch you generally have to be at your table… but quite often inspiration will just strike wherever,” Yeow told InDaily.
“You’ll be walking through a park … and something sets off inside of you. It’s always been difficult to draw in that setting. I’ve tried to make something that allows you to do that.”
During the initial phases of the design, Yeow conducted motion studies, finding that most bags available on the market required some 10-12 steps – open the bag, find your pencil, open the next zip, etcetera – before pencil could be put to paper.
“When you add up the number of steps to get there, it’s actually really prohibitive ,” he said.
“Between the time of you thinking of the idea and then getting home and writing it down, life happens and then you forget it.”
It only takes three or four steps to start sketching using the Nomad.
Yeow now plans to design larger versions of the product.
The Nomad art satchel is available for purchase here.
