Studioclues - Industrial design blog and portfolio site

Old school Atari concepts

Tom — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 01:15:43 +0000

Stumbled upon these old school Atari concept sketches that never were. These concepts show some brilliant old school marker renderings of designs that led to our classic Atari console of the 80′s. Love to see nice marker work.

http://m.kotaku.com/5629281/the-ataris-that-never-were/gallery/

Auburn University Industrial Design visit

Tom — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:38:44 +0000

I want to thank my alma mater Auburn for letting me come and visit. Professor Tsai Lu Liu came and asked me to come help with a class and critique concepts and designs. It was a great experience and I enjoyed every minute of it. I fully appreciated the experience with the students and the time to talk about their sketches and ideas. I remember when I was in their shoes trying to work through the design phase and the struggles of developing a concept. It was a surreal experience. i will be going back in October to see the progress in the concepts.

I also want to thank Randy Bartlett, Brett Smith, Tin Man Lau and Chris Arnold for their contribution to my education. It was great to come back to AU.

War Eagle!

Smartphone interfaces will improve desktop apps

Tom — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:23:48 +0000

I sit on my iPhone checking email, Facebook, and Twitter a good percentage of the day. What a luxury and experience that even 5 years ago I probably could not have imagined. The experience with my content is so seamless that I sometimes prefer to use my iPhone over my 21 in desktop monitor. Why? I have come to realize that the experience is just so direct and efficient. Smartphones due to their mobile nature have limited screen size which forces developers to cut out unnecessary buttons and options to focus on the content. With a large monitor it easy for software developers to put unnecessary info on the screen that is uneeded and distracts from the content.

I think we will see a trend in design where desktop developers will begin seeing the value of “less is more” when designing desktop apps. This will only improve desktop application experiences as we move forward.

Font identifying iPhone app

Tom — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:41:43 +0000

I just downloaded a clever little iPhone app called “What the font”. The app analyzes a screen grab or a picture of a word and then suggests matching fonts. A very handy app for any designer.

Link to the app in the iTunes store..

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/whatthefont/id304304134?mt=8

Vintage calculators

Tom — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 02:16:50 +0000

I spent quite a long time on this site tonight and wanted to share. Vintage electronics get me going.

Via

http://www.core77.com/blog/news/128_vintage_old_school_calculators_17164.asp

Core 77 interviews Jonathan Ive , VP of Design at Apple

Tom — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 01:09:09 +0000

iPhone 4 is here if you haven’t heard. And it’s has proven to b,e in the short time available, Apple’s most successful product launch. 1.7 Million units sold in the first weekend. So what is so special about this phone? Designers revel when a product in which design plays a center role is so successful. I would call it vindication? It proves that attention to detail and user experience can take a product to another level. There is no way to measure how stunning the phone is and a highly thought out user interface is a tough thing to quantify. But Apple still strives for perfection in both of these areas. It’s just ingrained in their culture.

Core 77 interviewed Jonathan Ive, VP of Design at Apple about the iPhone 4. It was a great write up about how Apple takes so much time and effort understanding manufacturing and how manufacturing affects the materials in use. Ive talks a lot about how a lot of products miss the mark when it comes to executing these points. Many products spend a lot of time in CAD where designers work on the actual 3d dimensional form and then pay little attention to what is going to actually happen when the materials spec’ed are shaped into the form in which the designer intends.

Read the whole interview at Core 77

Monkee design – featured designer nomination

Tom — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 02:19:59 +0000

Today I received notification that I am nominated as a featured designer at Monkee Design. I want to thank Monkee for the nomination. If you feel so inclined please cast a vote via this link.

Wacom cintiq pen nibs

Tom — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:18:32 +0000

I was talking to someone the other day about my new Cintiq and I mentioned the felt tip nibs that I prefer to use. I didn’t realize that a lot of people neglect to change their pen nib type from the standard white one that comes out of the box. The felt nib is the black one shown below. It has a significantly shorter life span than the standard white one, but offers a lot more friction on the screen. Which, in my opinion, creates a much more natural drawing experience. I do find that over time a flat spot forms on the nib tip that I sometimes have to sand away with some fine grit sandpaper to get a little more life out of. There is also a spring loaded pen tip that I do not know whether is still available.

School chair refresh!

Tom — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:32:24 +0000

I love design that takes the artifacts and designs that we all we know and love and makes them a bit better. The school chair below was designed by IDEO and Steelcase and brings together a bunch of small innovations while keeping the classic side entry configuration that we all grew up with. Then they wrap it all up in this exceptionally gorgeous form. I want to point out the amazing surfacing craft on that seat. Truly beautiful.

Via http://www.fastcompany.com/

Visually matching radii

Tom — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:07:18 +0000

I know this is getting a bit geeky but it might come in handy someday when you are pumping CAD.

I tend to get into small decisions like this all the time. When laying out 2d curves in CAD and you want similar “looking” radii at the corners it tends to be a judgment call if the straighter sections come off at different angles. The below sketch shows a 12mm radii on the left off of two perpendicular lines. The same size radii on the right is placed between two lines that come together at a 45. The size of the radii does not look similar to me, although they are identical.

Decreasing angle as seen below on the right to 22.5 degrees ( half of 45) makes the radii look even more different.

So here’s a try at double the radius value of twelve on the left. It’s a judgment call at this point. I’m gonna saw these radii look about the same at this point. Close enough to fool most people.

So now I’m going to try to visually match the radii again at the 22.5 degrees (half of 45 degrees) side. I raised the value of the radii to 48 (4X 12). Look about right? Again a judgment call. Looks good to me.

What is visually the same is a judgment call. But I do have something else to measure here. Here is the last scenario I showed with the for times radius value on the 22.5 degree angle. I thought it looked about right. I then measured the arc length and it appears they are exactly the same.

I knew this was going to happen, I just want to point out the fact then when created visually matching radii on a series of straighter segments, the radius value should not be matched, it should be the arc length. Typically a bit harder to do when creating sketches in CAD. But it seems to be more accurate according to the eye.