Rebrand of Vera, a cyber security brand that seeking a change in their product offering to gain recognition in the market, sponsoring a kayak racing event and collaborating with two iconic outdoor brands, POC and Giro.

In 2021 Spring, I designed a set of protection gears for kayakers including a helmet and a life jacket. Salus, which is the helmet that is integrated with rechargeable and replaceable oxygen tank for emergency use when the kayaker is accidently trapped under a river swirl or turbulent, this happened to many kayakers, in fact, the inspiration came from a local news reporting a fatal drowning incident happened to a young female kayak enthusiast. A simple mechanism that provides couple minutes of oxygen can save many of lives. To make the feature possible, I added a fully sealed face mask with two, one way valves not just to protect users from breathing in splashing water when kayaking through the rapids, but most importantly, deliver reliable oxygen under water. The yellow knob on the side of the helmet is to adjust the mask and also able to fold the mask into the helmet for easier storing.

The second product of this project is the Iris life jacket. Life jackets tend to be bulky and inevitably reduce the agility which people absolutely don't prefer. I want this life jacket to be desirable, encouraging young generations the wear it, that is why I go with inflatable airbag feature. With the advantage of the airbag, I was able to integrate foams to improve the overall appearance of the product which was a big reason why customers aren't wearing them. And there is more, I added POC armor plates in the back to protect kayakers from spine injuries using D3O foam material. D3O is incredibly light and flexible and it stiffens up among impact to absorb external forces. The airbags are filled by a single replaceable CO2 tank which can be manually activated by the pulling the pull tag under the left side of the chest.

Drowning is the 5th leading causes of accidental deaths in the U.S., and 85% of the victims didn't wear a life jacket. Thus, this project is aiming to encourage people to wear life saving devices when attempting water events. In my vision, life jacket should be protective while enhancing user's performance and being life saving when accident happens.