RAZER BRACE
For downhill skateboarders. By gamers.
In this project, two relationships are explored together — function and brand — that are very different, with the intention to be polar to one another creating a cohesive design from unrelated elements. This project's function is to be a prophylactic knee brace for downhill skateboarding whose brand and form language are that of Razer Inc, the gaming hardware company.
Each sketching session was preceded by a series of images and abstractions connected to Razer's use of snakes, like the original Boomslang gaming mouse and many other products that also later utilized snakes and other animal inspiration.
The knee brace has several ergonomic aspects: it features a patella guard because of the direct impacts to the knee during skateboarding, leading to dislocations of the patella; it also prevents even more common superficial wounds like scrapes and bruises; and it features a back-to front design because downhill skateboarders receive superficial scrapes oftentimes on the backs of their thighs as they change from falling forward to sliding on their posterior.
The buckle used for fastening the brace to the user's leg was an early brand exercise in the assignment that helped to show the parallels between Razer's design language and the functionality of the brace.
