This month Locus Research’s designer is residence and special guest for the week was Mat Nalder; an accomplished and well respected designer in the international outdoor equipment industry. Mat originates from Golden Bay New Zealand, and his outdoor posits as a child lead him to Design School where he received a Bachelor of Design with honours majoring in Industrial Design.

Mat initially got a feel for the global outdoor scene by attending international outdoor shows and international outdoor companies. Mat cut his teeth in the industry working for Macpac Wilderness Equipment in Christchurch for a number of years under leading kiwi designer Bryn Chapple. Macpac was a great introduction as Macpac then offered a complete R&D environment which gave him advanced skills over competitor company designers. During his time at Macpac, Mat spent a lot of time working on blue sky projects and technology, as well as re-developing their Down Clothing, Sleeping Bags, Pack Ranges and commercial projects. Mat then made the move to the Northern Hemisphere to be closer to the larger outdoor markets of Europe and North America, manufacturers and suppliers.

In 2008, Mat joined Equip Outdoor Technologies Ltd which owns the brands RAB, Lowe Alpine Equipment, Pod Sacs, Integral Designs, Outdoor Designs and has offices in the UK and in North America. With Equip, Mat has designed innovative new down sleeping bags which focuses on science driven performance designs. He has designed numerous ranges of backpacks that focus on freedom of movement in trekking, stripdown applications for alpine climbing, unique features for big wall climbing, shape functionality sport climbing and simplicity for lightweight hiking and mountain biking. He has also designed accessories that include base, mid and shell layer glove and hats systems that stretch from alpinism to back country skiing as well as multiple storage stuff sack solutions, bouldering pads... the list of product goes on.

Mat moved back to Golden Bay in 2011, and still works for Equip under contract from New Zealand. Mat’s most recent project includes as complete rebuild of the Integral Designs tent and bivi range with a focus on single skin high performance 3 layer fabrics and modular component systems.

Mats key achievements in the outdoor industry include:

• A sleeping bag designed for expedition use was independently tested under EU standards to an extreme temperature use of -84°C. This amazed the official EU testing facility as this sleeping bag rated approximately 30°C better than competitors with the same spec. The lowest temperature ever recorded on the surface of the Earth was −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F; 184.0 K) at the Russian Vostok Station in Antarctica July 21, 1983. Mat laughs that he was 5.2 °C off hitting the ultimate goal.

• A tent designed and built for use in an expedition to Changabang helped save the lives of 2 climbers and with-held its high altitude position on a lonely ridge as a major storm ripped ice from the face of the mountain and buried advanced based camp under 2 metres of snow drift. Many other climbers in the valley suffered major losses. Often stories of amazing survival are relayed back to designers, but this is one he will always remember.

• Often Mat would work on pure blue sky projects, many would remain in the concept and development stage due to the priority of commercially driven projects. He mentions it is always a thrill to see a competitor company release the same basic concepts several years later. He also says its quiet a personal achievement to see product that he has developed walking down the street or in the outdoors wilderness somewhere.

During Mats time with us last week he presented a series projects that he has worked on and products that he has developed. See the flickr gallery for photos. Mat shared many insights with us that will no doubt enable our team to be more innovative and successful in outdoor related projects in the future. We publish some of these thoughts in a blog entry as principals for outdoor design below to assist in the development process.