Joseph Graff – Aesthetics of Design

Overall, I was fairly pleased with the final product that I was able to produce. It didn’t quite live up to my expectations, in terms of what I thought I was capable of producing the first time around, but I have a lot of notes to take forward with me when I do decide to…

Personal Tattoo Machine – Final Project Report Part I

April 21, 2016

Introduction This will be the first installment of a two-part report, chronicling the design and production of my final project for Aesthetics of Design, the Personal Tattoo Machine. Within this post, you can expect to find detailed explanations of the decisions I made over the course of this project, in addition to how I produced several…

Weekly Update – April 20th

April 21, 2016

For this week, I mainly focused on building the tattoo machine’s circuit, which turned out to be a somewhat insignificant amount of time. With the senior design expo being this week, the vast majority of my time was spent in preparation for the expo. But I was able to design the simple circuit to be…

Weekly Update – Wednesday, April 13th

April 14, 2016

Over the course of this project, I have considered time and time again doing something which I am entirely unsure of how it will be received: contacting the designer of the project which inspired my own. Jakub Pollág is a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, and is the co-founder of Studio…

Weekly Update – Wednesday, April 6th

April 8, 2016

This past week, I made a few test prints of my critical component, the cam which actuates the needle and allows it to ascend and descend within the tattoo tube, and the results were mixed. I prefer not to use the ITLL’s 3D printers, as I feel the constant use of the printers from many…

Weekly Update – Wednesday, March 30th

March 31, 2016

At this point in the project, I’ve fallen a bit behind in where I not only thought I would be by now, but also where I would have liked to have been. Based on my projected timeline for the semester, I made the projection that I would have a working prototype by the end of…

Personal Tattoo Machine – Project Progress

March 18, 2016

My project’s timeline has shifted a bit, as I knew it inevitably would. These last couple weeks have been exceptionally busy, and I haven’t had much time to devote to my project, other than to research parts for purchase and to brainstorm designs for my future prototypes. I am planning to make substantial progress on…

99% Invisible – A Podcast About Design

March 18, 2016

I’ve been listening to this podcast for a while now, and it has quickly become one of my all-time favorites. If you love podcasts, design, history, interesting stories, or just some strange amalgam of them all, then you’ll love 99% Invisible. Recommended Episodes: – Episode 110: Structural Integrity – Episode 114: Ten Thousand Years –…

Personal Tattoo Machine – Top 5 Constraints

March 13, 2016

The cam which translates the rotational motion of the DC motor to translational motion of the needle is the most critical component of my project. I plan to make several prototypes of the cam to test the varying travel of the needle. This is important because if there is too much travel on the needle,…

Personal Tattoo Machine

March 12, 2016

Introduction The sharing of ideas between individuals is a beautiful thing, but it has the potential to be rather difficult. Taking the idea in your head and adequately expressing it in words is the most direct and accessible means of expressing one’s own ideas, but the complexities and finer details of the idea can often…

Final Project Inspiration – Joe Graff

March 3, 2016

When considering what I wanted to produce for my final project, my mind immediately went to music and music instrument production. I’m not entirely sure why this happens, but it may be because I have experience with music instrument production through a class I took here at CU called Electronic Musical Instrument Design, or it…

My Aspirations (Or Lack Thereof)

February 24, 2016

As I approach my final year of college in the mechanical engineering department, I can’t help but be filled with wonder at how quickly these years have gone by, elation I am almost to the end, fear of the future and of the unknown, and relief to finally, at long last, be done. And I…

Some (Sub)Sweet Skills

February 13, 2016

As both a student of Mechanical Engineering and Technology, Arts, and Media, I feel that I have a rather varied skill set which falls on both sides of the form/function spectrum. I consider myself to be rather proficient in CAD programs, namely SolidWorks and AutoDesk Inventor, but I’m also rather experienced with Adobe Illustrator as…

Recreating a Classic Poster with Acrylic and Vinyl

February 6, 2016

Introduction My relationship to the upcycle project can be categorized as nothing but tumultuous. The aspect of the this assignment with which I struggled with most was not time constraints or a lack of resources, but rather a barrier of creativity and originality through which I could not breach. I saw upcycling as a beautiful concept:…

Vinyl Record Clock

February 1, 2016

The aspect of the this assignment with which I struggled with most was not time constraints or a lack of resources, but rather a barrier of creativity and originality through which I could not breach. I saw upcycling as a beautiful concept: at times, turning something vaguely useless into something with purpose; and at others,…

Pixel Art

January 20, 2016