Update 015.
Progress.
Where do good ideas come from?
As a design educator and professional you would think I should know right? Yes there are tools we can use to learn about those we are designing for, design processes that give our work structure but the reality is, inspiration still strikes at the strangest of moments.
This was where lighting struck for this months new product announcement:
Glamorous right? As a longtime listener to the Making It Podcast with Jimmy Diresta, I have always connected with how he speaks about the need for problems/projects to have time to just sit inside your head. Without directly thinking about it, your brain is always slowly processing the problem in the background. That’s exactly what happened this month, sitting in a kids soft-play on a Saturday morning.
Sometimes we just need to let things percolate and give the seed of an idea time to grow.
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Scoop and Bud update!
Things always take longer than you think.
If I had a penny for every time I said this - or if the penny actually dropped… I wouldn’t have the naivety often needed to start projects like this. This month has been all about plaster mould making. Having made quite a few plaster moulds in the past from silicone master moulds, I didn’t expect this to be quite so challenging. With 5 separate moulds and a need for 4+ sets of each design, I was aiming for 16 flawless plaster moulds. The better the quality of the mould, the better the quality of the resulting slip cast parts.
This has been a month fine tuning my process and testing the water with a multitude of approaches to mixing and casting plaster… without air bubbles! If you want to see what my dialled in process involved, check out my production highlights on IG.
After a lot of casts like this…
I began to make casts like this:
I have begun to cast the first few production samples and the moulds are working flawlessly!
Let me know what you think in the comments!
Thank you
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use at checkout: SubstackCrew
Last months most clicked link: CMF Watch Pro 2
My top 5 pieces of content I have found helpful/inspiring:
1.
Making It Podcast. An absolute staple in my library over the last 5+ years. hosted by Jimmy Diresta, Bob Claggatt and David Picciuto (YouTube makers), this laid back unformatted podcast is like listening in on friends having a conversation - perfect for when you’re making something yourself in the background.
2.
Circus Extreme. This month I took my son to the circus for the first time. I didn’t have a clue what we were in for but this is hands down the best circus I have ever been to and the amazon prime series (whilst low budget) is such a nice insight into the lives of those in the circus.
3.
Gold: A journey with Idris. I love a good documentary and whilst at times this felt a little sponsored by big gold companies this was a really solid watch.
4.
Olympic Gold Medal. Whilst it’s a nice touch for every Paris games medal to contain a little bit of the Eiffel Tower… it’s still much more impressive in my eyes that the Tokyo recovered the precious metal for their medals from 78,000+ tonnes of e-waste!
5.
Belgian Waffles. I grew up in Belgium and you can’t beat a proper Belgian Waffle. They have to be fresh though and having tested quite a few recipes over the years, this one is the first I have tried that actually comes close. Yum.
Last month’s most clicked find was the CMF watch pro 2 - so I’m not the only one that has been drawn in by this watch. Having used this watch for around a month now, there is so much to love about it. It’s not without its flaws though - the worst of which is the charger. It’s a compromise I can understand with the branding being focussed around accessible pricing but it’s a compromise too far for me personally.
This watch has a battery life of a few days (charging my Apple Watch was a real bugbear!). That being said… charging this watch is a nightmare. trying to find the charging cable on my bedside, connecting it to the watch and the frustration as it disconnects as I set it down in the dark!
As this watch likely grows in popularity, I wanted to design a simple dock that works with the charger and makes the charging experience more positive. Following Nothing’s lead, the design should be as accessible as possible, so this design should be optimised for 3D printing and freely available to download.
With that in mind… this felt like one of my simpler projects, or so I thought. The design of the charger cable means that the resulting dock needs to be quite wide to accommodate the cable itself and caused some real headaches establishing a visual language that tied to the watch itself without feeling overly bulky.
I came up with 5 designs and would love to hear whether you think I took the best one forward?
Taking your feedback on board, I will refine the design and release it for free on thingiverse and bambulabs Makerworld.