SOG as a brand works hard to cultivate a clear and distinct emotional response. SOG wants the user to experience the ethos of the tactical operator, the quintessential manly tough guy that not only gets the job done no matter how impossible, but gets it done with cool, confident, competent style.
How on earth do you make a flashlight to evoke that type of emotion?
Having never been trained to design anything to capture an emotional response I had a rough time with this project. After a about 2 days of frustrating work I started creating a mental mood board of what images my mind linked with SOG's ethos (remember that I am an engineer and therefore was never taught how to do mood boards). Oddly enough I became fixated on a flat end mill as an image. It is industrial, hard working, tough, sharp and precise. So I started playing spiraling sweep cuts. I mixed in some knurling and I got the dark energy line.
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SOG Dark Energy
Designing a covert ops flashlight is not as easy as you would think. In the end I learned a few things about brands, brand image and the emotional response of the end user.
The week of Thanksgiving 2010 I got snowed in so I telecommuted to work and decided to hammer out the Dark Energy line. I must have made around 60 different variations but none of them looked good. They just didn't "feel right". It was a long 3 days...In the end I learned a few things about brands, brand image and the emotional response of the end user.
