designing the brixton planters

New Product Spotlight : Brixton Planter Series
Q&A: Veradek Product Designers 

"The best feeling in designing the Brixton line was seeing how the insert bucket and the riser seamlessly attached to the main body of the planters"

Dom,
Veradek Product Designer

Here at Veradek Outdoor, we’re a design-led company. With the creation of every product, we seek to create high quality, all-weather products that will transform your outdoor living space. Keeping this promise as the foundation of our creation process introduces new and exciting challenges to tackle, especially for our Product Design team. We spent some time with Robbie and Domenic to pick their brains on the unique hurdles they overcame in designing the new Brixton Series line of outdoor planters.

What is the inspiration behind the Brixton Series?

In striving to create elegant and modern products, we found inspiration to create a new planter series inspired by design cues from Victorian architecture. We decided to explore a modern take on a classic style.

Our inspiration
Victorian architecture styling:

• Steep, gabled roofs
• Ornamental architecture
• Quirky charm
• Detailed trim

What was the challenge in creating the Brixton line?

The Brixton Series is made from a high-grade polypropylene. When looking at the manufacturing process, we worked through some tricky design challenges to make production more viable, both in a physical and cost-effective sense.

Our solution was to break up the design into three separate components - the insert bucket, the main body, and the riser. This technical design reduces the amount of soil needed to fill the planter while maintaining style and durability.

Throughout the process of designing the Brixton Series, we burned through countless cups of coffee, pages in our sketchbooks, and were even kept up at night trying to figure out how to create the best looking and functioning product we could while keeping affordable costs for the customer at the forefront. Despite reaching several points where we were tempted to can the project altogether, we persevered through it and are really happy with the results! We ultimately hope that the fruits of our labour will mean better enjoyment and satisfaction from our customers.

What inspired the name “Brixton”?

During our late-night brainstorming sessions, we often had music playing to keep the creative juices flowing. It just so turned out that David Bowie was a go-to for our jams, and how perfect that he was from Brixton – a place where our design styling was directly inspired by! We scratched out “Brixton Series” on our notebooks and never looked back since it just felt right. 

What are some of your favourite details about the Brixton Series?

The best feeling in designing the Brixton line was seeing how the insert bucket and the riser seamlessly attached to the main body of the planters. Although we heavily drew inspiration from the Victorian theme of form over function, we knew we had to incorporate the accessibility and functionality that Veradek promises and is known for: easy and simple setup, all season durability, and lightweight portability. 

Which Brixton Planter is the design team’s favourite and why?

The Brixton Cube is my (our?) favourite in the series because of the design challenge it presented – the intimidating task of molding a perfect cube. This pushed us to think more innovatively in designing for manufacturability (DFM) to create an elegant solution.