Design 101 - Where did you get your Inspiration?
- Christian Owens
- Mar 27
- 3 min read
I've watched so many youtube videos, it's hard to remember exactly when I started focusing on #vanbuild and #vanlife subject matter. I'm pretty certain a world traveling couple's more localized adventures during Covid, in a van, was the inspiration.
But the channels that gave me the foundation of my build concepts were:
The order of those links are presented represent 2 things. First, who had the most impact on my own design, and second, who is primarily educational/'how to' in their content creation.
I find that the quality I perceive within content on youtube, falls on a spectrum of education VS self promotion. Educators show what they are doing and how they are doing it. Influencers show their faces and talk a lot without showing much of anything. I am more attracted to the 'howto' content.
From ExploristLife, I found the concept of build 'modularity'. Their van is set up to allow for bolting components to the floor, walls, and ceiling. The idea of thinking about portions of your van build as components was really appealing. Also, this was the first time I'd seen extrusion used as a build component.
From OurKaravan I found the answer to a question I'd been asking during my mental design phase. How am I going to mount my walls?
One of the things I didn't like about ExploristLife's van build was their wall build out. After watching hundreds of #vanbuild videos it seemed to me that almost everyone in the world believes that one must fir out (put a layer of wood onto) the structural ribs of your van, and that these wood ribs are what your attach your wall panels to.
I came at it from a different perspective. The 4th design criteria for my build was to hold a motorcycle inside the van. Motorcycle are generally big and take up a lot of space, particularly cruisers and adventure touring motorcycles. Likewise, I am pretty big/tall and I wanted to sleep sideways in the van. A van is only 75-68" wide depending on make/model and elevation within the cargo area. Loosing 1 inch of that width to firing strips is almost a 2% loss on total interior volume. There had to be a better way.
For a while I looked at metal firing kits. They are thinner than wood, and they promise to make your build/stronger/safer. I feel like that's snake oil. Mostly I think that metal firing kits will make attachment of wall panels easier/more consistent for custom builders. That's the true appeal/value of those kits. Convenience and possibly higher finish quality. But the cost.....too high for me.
Then I found OurKaravan and learned that Logistics Track, hereafter referred to as LTrack, came in a flanged profile. The flanged profile could capture up to 3/8" of walls.
Flanged Ltrack is also just 0.5" think. If I could attach it to the ribs of my van, I would save almost 2% of my interior volume.
The rest of the youtube channels mentioned provided tips/tricks/inspiration, but once I had these two concepts, modularity and flanged LTrack for mounting....I was off to the races.
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