GEAR: The Final Frontier

Introduction

              As students in the e-Communication program, we thought it would be beneficial to get to know a local company located in Lenexa, GEAR.  This company designs and mass produces apparel and media for big name brands that they have bought-out such as Champion, Under Armor, and GEAR for Sports. Their projects ship worldwide. While on our tour, we visited different divisions of the company and saw the employees in action.

Experience/Tour

              Our tour of the building began in the printing warehouse. Dozens of high-tech printing machines, ovens, packaging stations, and storage. The organization of the whole process of printing shows the company's dedication to organization and success. We were shown the production of the apparel templates, which was carried out in a dark room in order to preserve the slates. Then we went into a room with a very large printer that could print different sizes, paper types, staple, bind, hole punch, etc. I couldn't help but think how amazing it would be to have one of those in our classroom. Next we visited one of the most interesting and important part of the building, the graphic design department. It's a huge space arranged into groups of cubicles according to company and another group for the designers who put together catalogs and other media. They have trending boards as areas for sources of inspiration, and areas to critique and converse. The reason they are set up into teams is to keep branding unique to each company/brand. The department had very dim lighting and it was calm-- no music. According to a poll taken by GEAR, the designers described this as an ideal environment to meet their tight deadlines.

Conclusion

              GEAR was my favorite field trips of this school year because apparel design is my favorite part of graphic design. I was inspired specifically by the graphic design department's attention to detail such as printing mediums, always pushing the boundaries in order to stay on top of trends. It's hard to even wrap my mind around the fact that we saw only a very small scope of the company.