Interurban Era

Back in design school for fun, I designed what I imagined a realistic and thoughtful modern rotary dial cellphone might look like. Smooth to fit in your pocket, still screen equipped for address book & caller ID. Presumably some robust bell labs grade voice-to-text feature instead of a keyboard. It was a really fun challenge.

What do you think?

A recent post on a 3D printing facebook group highlighted something I'd also experienced on a much smaller scale: the sheer volume of functionally useless 3D printer misfires. Considering most resins aren't recyclable, and even if they were there's no infrastructure to do so for most people.

It makes me wonder what this layer of garbage in our landfills is going to look like when 3D printers become even more commonplace than they are now.

Are we actually saving anything by printing it ourselves? We still have the ecological impact of the specialized, often petrochemical or polymer based resins being produced. We still have the problem with a dense liquid being volumetrically heavy having to be shipped often halfway across the world to you.

We no longer have to produce expensive milled aluminum injection molds + the multi-ton machinery to support those, nor do we have to make an endless amount of mold positive/negatives like older resin model kits. However, will the little broken 3D parts and failed prints, and supporting lattice waste catch up with all this? Large factories have ways of melting down the tired Alumium injection molds and remelting ABS and PET to mold again. Bob down the street in his garage doesn't. (usually)

My own misadventures with my Anycubic Photon proved that for me, personally, 3D printing is best left to the professionals. I ended up purchasing gallons of resin, wasting weeks on failed prints, and all of them weren't good enough to be used as "scrap" details and so went right into the garbage. It feels so icky, even if the benefits are so tantalizing.

I want this technology to work so well, so badly. However it still feels like it hasn't quite hit the mark yet. I hope we keep pushing with it, just as long as we don't get buried in failed print debris.

I cannot stop laughing!

This has to be the most post-modern telephone design I've ever seen. I wonder what the designer was thinking back in the 80s when it was designed.

It's a Webcor Desk/ Wall Mount Telephone with Jumbo Buttons, Model 767SW

While I was in Industrial Design school in the mid 2010s I loved doing drawings from random prompts. One of my favorite I ever did was my own design for a 1970s era cabover semi truck. the challenge was to design it using the parts and limitations in manufacturing of the era, so you can see the square sealed beam headlights, riveted roof and plenty of chrome plating. I'd just recently learned the old illustration trick, known as "desert chrome" shading, and what object could possibly be better than a semi truck to show that off?

"VULCAN" is my own brand name for a heavy equipment manufacturer similar to International Harvester. Looking at this drawing now makes me want to draw some more of these.

What should I draw next?