Electronics by themselves are pretty boring. They lack color and have a very cold mechanical look to them. Our solution to this problem was to add a face to each component and really give each component a strong personality. Some of the components are puns and others are just happy to be there!
For example, just looking at the characters on the top row from left to right, the small ceramic capacitors are typically valued at pF (pico Farad). Hence, they have a little attitude and turn up their noses and say 'pF'. The large electrolytic capacitors are much bigger and have more umf. They are typically valued in the uF range (micro Farad). These big blue guys have their hands on their hips, and strike a masculine pose and say 'uF'. Finally the switch is a Single-Pole-Double-Throw or SPDT. If you just say SPDT it sounds like absolute nonsense. Our switch sticks out his tongue and makes a rasberry to mimich the sound 'SPDT!'
Designing the Print
After we made the characters we decided to make an interesting print for our product. We wanted to use this print on a number of different items. Our pencil bag, shirts, mugs, laptop cases etc. |
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We started with just the name 'MIT', then put some characters playing around the letters. Color was important, and lots of smiling faces! We wanted the print to look fun and upbeat. The print was still pretty sparse, so we just kept adding more characters until we filled up the page. We were going for a busy colorful look for our print.
Printing onto Fabric
After, designing our print we needed a way to adhere it onto our pencil case our solution was to print it onto fabric and attach the fabric to our case. |
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We tiled our print, threw in a 150, added a light circuit board background, and some colorful resistor stripes. We experimented a few different color schemes to see which looked best. The flesh colored resistor background looked pretty awful. Our final decision was to print the two color schemes on the far right, these had the best color contrast for MIT.
We printed several yards on lycra spandex through a fabric printing company FabriconDemand. The lycra spandex was chosen because of its stretchiness for fitting the form of our pencil case. The printing company uses a technique called dye sublimation, by which the dye is actually absorbed into the fabric to produce a spectacular print. We were very pleased with the final print on the spandex.
The Final Print
If you would like a high resolution print please send us an email at herdd@mit.edu
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