EWY is the contraction of "Everwhere With You". It was created to have a nice sounding name, easy to read and to remember but also related to the values of the product. Read on and enjoy!

The story behind is pretty simple as I say on my website. I broke two external HDDs the year before this project so one day when I had time to work on something more personal and when I needed to show everything I learned from my experience as an intern at Fuseproject, I decided to create EWY.

- Clement Puertolas

About the concept, I was working on a project where one of the concept where using extruded metal for the architecture and then I remembered this tire concept from Michelin (the french brand) which wasn't using air but was still offering a great shock absorption.
Then I started studying external HDD market and I noticed some concepts playing with wire management, I thought it would actually be great to also work on this.

- Clement Puertolas

To finish, what required a lot of researches of inspirations was the CMF and the Patterns. Fortunately as I said, I was working at Fuseproject at this time, and this place is doing such a great job on this field, so I just needed to apply what I learned.
"Black to Black" is obviously the safe CMF for any consumer electronic product. Then you have "White x Gold" surfing on the trends of Champagne x Pink Golds with the purity of the white, probably more girly and fashion aspect. And finally you have Composinum my favorite for two reasons: the material for the rubber sleeve is inspired from something I have on one of my Nike soccer shoes, a resine plastic made out of recycled parts. And you have this ethnic pattern really contrasting with the consumer electronic aspect of the product. This last CMF/Pattern sounds definitely outstanding for me, that something I really like to design.

- Clement Puertolas

Choosing a brand was a challenge at the beginning. I really wanted to have something to stick to in term of language and vision. But after I figured out I would design it for LaCie everything seemed easier since this brand is supporting outstanding vision. Keeping the product as small as possible adding this kind of thick protecting sleeve was also a challenge, so I really had to think about a smart mechanical design. And one last thing was the patterns. They needed to perfectly fit the shape of my product, to reflect the CMF and to look as great as possible obviously. And this was just for the 2D job...adding them into my CAD was a pretty long and meticulous process.

- Clement Puertolas

I didn't have so much spare time to work on this project but fortunately pretty quickly I found the concept and the form factor of my product. I tried as deep as I could to think about the mechanical design, but this product is pretty simple so I just focused on keeping the mechanical design as simple. As I said the trickiest thing was the CMFs and the Patterns. So I would say probably 2-3 ID concepts and 6-10 CMF/Patterns variation.

- Clement Puertolas

About Clement Puertolas

Clement Puertolas graduated from ISD in Valenciennes, France in the year 2013. He is a designer because he always like to solve any kind of problems and then he finds out that he actually like to make things better for himself and for the others. He chose to focus on industrial design after he tried to become an engineer. His capability to reach people emotions, through the experience, through the enjoyment or even through the quality of product are the things he love about his job. You can find more of his works on his Behance profile or website.