Well this is it. The final project (other than the portfolio) for this visual design course. I got my desk ready for one last brainstorm session. Well, last for this class. This desk has seen many sketches and scribbles made on it over the years before this class and will most likely continue to do so well after. I made sure it was cleaned, got my sharpies, pens, and of course, blank papers ready. As usual, my initial work on this project had been research. The research had an initial stage to it before I could even begin my actual project research. The meta-research that always causes my oft-indecisive brain so much trouble. What company/business/institution/event/etc. is this project going to be based on? A tv network? A retail seller? Something more abstract? I always find this to be one of the most difficult parts. There’s so many different possibilities. I ended up on a website called thingiverse.com. It’s owned by one of the most well known sellers of 3d printers, Ultimaker. It’s gone through some revisions in its life, like most websites. At its core though, it remains primarily a website for designers to share 3d models and STL files for individuals with 3d printers or other automated manufacturing machines to be able to make their item. I have a 3d printer, and I’ve used the website a fair bit for models for little doo-dads, decorations, and one-off tools. This assignment is sort of like my own small contribution.

I started off working on the drawings for the website design. I wanted it to be different than their current actual website. It’s fairly similar to pinterest. A scrollable board of different downloadable designs called “things”. I made a very simple retro design that drew heavily from another website I make use of: Reddit. In the interest of nostalgia, I went for a design reminiscent of the original, classic reddit website. Mostly white background, individual blocks for each new “thing” and a simple no-nonsense “logo” (that’s just text of the name “thingiverse”). Is it the prettiest? Absolutely not. But it is a throw back to me personally, and for anyone else who used the internet in the barbaric olden days of the internet circa 2008. I mocked up the initial wireframes for both the mobile and desktop versions on paper with black sharpie. After that I remade it digitally to clean up the lines and resolve some of the layout ambiguities I’d left in the drawn version.

I finished up the sample design in Adobe XD, another new bit of software for me. Once I’d figured out the basic interface enough to make simple designs, I came up with the final sample.

I used some sample images of a couple of common first prints, specifically a benchy and a small cubical cat. These designs are often used by beginners to calibrate their printer when they first get it set up. The rubber ducky I threw in mostly as a joke. It felt a fitting archetype of the “toy”, and while 3d printers can certainly be used for practical designs, they’re often, especially initially used for simple toys.

The newsletter I designed the same way, first drawing it out on paper. After a few rough drafts, I made a final wireframe, this time sticking with paper. I skipped the creation of the digital wireframe for this one and jumped straight from drawn wireframe to designed newsletter. Here’s the final drawing:

I used mailchimp to actually create the newsletter, and mostly stuck to the drawn design with surprisingly little modification, although I did add some social media symbols at the bottom. In addition to my archetypal toy, I also added a more “practical” example of some 3d prints, in the form of a wrench and some bolts. To be fair these are probably toys themselves, but I felt like it got the point across. To polish it off I made a new logo in Canva and used it as header of the email. Here’s the final result:

And that was the end of the weeks project. The only thing left for the class was just to put everything I’d made in the course together into a portfolio. But I’ll save that for another blog post.