Rapha x Apple

The daily commute to work is usually made more bearable for the majority of us by one thing alone: our electronic devices. When Rapha and Apple came together to form this dream collaboration, we were more than eager to see the end results for ourselves.

Rapha’s Creative Director, Alex Valdman, was inspired to design a collection of unique accessories for Apple by drawing from the observations he made from San Francisco’s cycling community. In their own words, “This limited edition collection of padded luggage has been designed by Rapha for Apple products. Each piece was created to transport Apple devices on and off the bike, allowing riders to move seamlessly between the streets, the office, and wherever their wheels take them”. This truly became a unique, exciting range – specifically created to allow our devices, such as the iPad, to handle the wear and tear of city life.

Rapha approached Progress at concept stage, offering us a chance to become a partner in this incredible journey and input our ideas and work through the entire development stages alongside them. With eight different sized products to package – each one split between three colour designs – we had 24 versions to create. A collapsible rigid box with a magnetic closure offered both quality and flexibility for these high-end products, with each one being printed four colours throughout, as well as a soft touch laminate being applied to the outer. In order to achieve the optimum ‘reflective’ effect to the luggage bag strips, we then added an addition special screen print to that area, making them a perfect colour match to that on the product itself. Inside the box, we applied a custom-dyed pink ribbon pull to allow an easy transition of the item from the box to the end user’s hands.

Although this is one of many special jobs we’ve run working alongside Rapha, it’s our very first entry into global-wide Apple stores, and we couldn’t be happier with the striking end results.