NOBULL Materials Library

Reorganizing the footwear team's materials library so designers could find a swatch by construction, supplier and season instead of digging through binders.

Category: Materials Library
Year: 2026
Duration: Summer 2026
Role: Color, material, and finish design intern
For: NOBULL, Boston
Tools: Excel, Label printing, Slatwall hardware
Materials: Knits, Meshes, Leathers, Foams, Sockliners

Before and after

Before

As I found it: slatwall shelves of supplier swatch books and binders from Bentex Textile, Bowu Leather, Ortholite, Ariaprene and others, with no shared system.

After

The reorganized wall: labeled bins, a swatch rail, and section binders.

The system in use

Pulling a drawer of labeled swatch cards from the file box.

A hanger of mesh and knit swatches, each tagged with its code.

The problem

Every supplier ships samples differently: some as bound books, some as loose cards, some as hangers. Over a few seasons the wall had become a pile of binders sorted by nothing in particular. Designers knew where a material was only if they had put it there.

My brief was to make the library usable by anyone on the team, including the next intern.

What I did

I inventoried every book and card on the wall, then grouped materials by construction (circular knit, warp knit, mesh, leather, foam, sockliner) and tagged each with supplier and season. Hanging swatches moved to a rail where they can be flipped through; books went into labeled sections; a printed index by the printer maps construction to shelf.

The result was a wall the team could navigate without asking, and a naming system that new samples slot into as they arrive.