Finalization of Tango...for now

Today I printed and finished my Tango project. It was a long and strenuous brief but I got it done before the deadline.

For the internal assessment, I had to produce a technical report, a 'kick-ass' model and 3 presentation boards.

The culmination of my work

When it is all put together, it doesnt look like a lot but believe me, it was.

I'm so glad I got it done before the deadline. It makes me feel like I worked really hard for the final outcome (which I did)

Some more work to be done on the external submission but that will be posted up if it is good enough.

Tango Design Boards

Today was a very productive day even though there is not a great amount of work to support it. I managed to get two of my design boards completed and will probably need a few tweaks to get them perfect.

A work in progress

Hopefully all will go smooth so I can get them all in on time.

But that is work for another day.

Tango Bottles Completed

So today I got to work to finish the Tango bottles. I printed out the labels and stuck them on. Ideally I could have done with photo paper and a better adhesive but for the purposes of getting a few pictures it was all I needed.

Not having a decent camera was a bit of a pain but Hannah has a D50 so I just borrowed that and set out for a shop so my bottles could be in the right environment.

I first went to ASDA but because of big stores being so anal about this kind of thing, they wouldn't let me take any pictures in the shop. So instead i went to the local newsagents.

In the fridge

Next to the original 600ml Tango

Spot the new Tango

Funky Labels

This is my favorite picture

It was really satisfying to see them finally done. Hopefully the guys at StarPack and Tango will like them as much as I do. I think I will apply to the external competition. Don't mean to blow my own trumpet or anything but I think I have a relatively good chance.

All left to do now is finish the report, do the design/presentation boards, create some point of sale items and story board a 30 second advert. Sounds a lot more when I write it down. Oh well, looks like a busy week ahead.

Sunday Sunday

Not a great deal actually happened today. Me and Hannah went to Manchester to look at the BITA (British Interior Textiles Association) fair. it took us 2 hours and £60 to get there by train and a further £30 in taxi fares. All in all it was a semi worthwhile trip. We had a free lunch and mooched around the stalls for a short while. Hannah really enjoyed looking at the fabrics and i was actually impressed by some of them. I just had ideas for hand carved chairs with this purple material over them. Pretty royal.

There was also a lot of designers of curtain rails and ends. Not a market I had previously thought of. But some of them were very interesting indeed. Some modern and some more traditional, but cool all the same.

On the way back, we went through Manchester Piccadilly train station and I noticed that it is actually a very nice building.

I liked the way the monitors are placed in the old open space

The roof over the station

I just really liked the roof. The contrast again the modern moving walkways.

Oh, and as a side note; On the train back i found a perfect example for the nurture argument between misbehaved people being bad because of nature or nurture. A man, pissed off his face belching and shouting and swearing to the carriage with his son chanting along with him. That boy will just be another skinhead and a statistic for violence. As long as he's not my kid though eh?

Tango Labels

I almost forgot about the Labels for the bottles. I think I went with the best design with consideration to the shape of the bottles.

The Labels have all of the relevant information as well as a strong simple logo with a decent variation for each.

So far this is the best picture I have. I don't have a working printer and all of my flat mates are away for the weekend. Nor do I have a good enough camera to take decent pictures. Or a camera at all for that matter.

They are the labels. Hopefully soon I will have some actually pictures to put up.

A Day of Spraying

So today I walked about 2 miles to get some spray paint so I could get some colours on my bottles. Seeing as i had 2 white bottles, they both needed to be coloured. I decided on black and orange as these are the two main colours for Tango. I wasn't too bothered about the cost because Liam would be using some too.

While I was at it, I decided I would spray the snowboard helmet I bought from Olli. It was brown to begin with; definitely not my colour so I decided to change it to purple like the rest of my snow gear.

Over all, with three colours, a primer and a clear laquer, it came to £16.95, not a bad price at all.

The primer was silver. I thought this would give a shine to the top colours but just didn't look right si I made sure they were opaque.

I really like the way the colours have come out. They have a great gloss on them like they would do if they were made properly. The range of colour works well too.

For the tops, I just forced the coloured ones on. They stay pretty well. the clear on is stuck on. This gives the models a very realistic touch.

The array of spray paint I bought.

Hopefully by Monday I will get the labels design propery and stuck on so I can photo them for my portfolio and design boards for the project. I'm actually starting to think I may enter the external competition as i seem to be very on top of all of my work for my uni hand in.

As well as spraying my bottles, I sprayed my helmet up to my favorite colour.

First of all I made sure I had a good Primer layer before adding the colour

With only a couple of coats the silver really shone through and looked a little 'sparkly' but after about 5 layers of purple it was a really good colour. I added a few clear coats after to make sure it was just that little bit tougher against scratches and the like.

So that was my productive Saturday, and later it will be a good old chinese take-away.

Then tomorrow I am going to Manchester for some kind or textile fair with Hannah which should be interesting.

More Tango Bottles

So Today was another long day. We did some more work on the robotics module we have with Lego NXT Mindstorm Kits. That's not going too well at the moment and there is nothing worth commenting on.

Spent another 3 hours in the workshop getting these bottles sorted.

I got the clear model stuck together as well as a white one that I intend to spray either black or orange

The bottles in comparison to the existing 600ml King Tango; I think mine is way better

I cut the top off the actual Tango bottle so i could have a proper screw top

I spent a short while making sure the clear bottle was air-tight. Then i can fill it with liquid so it actually look like a real bottle and not a 3D render that would take hours.

Hopefully I can get all of the painting out of the way this weekend and maybe the label design too. Then I have he whole of next week to do the design boards required for the hand in.

At this point I am still unsure whether to apply for the external competition too because of the extra work I would have to put in. We shall see after the weekend depending on how much I get done.

First Model of 2011

So this id the first project I have really taken a shine to. It is a bottle design for a tango brief. It called for an awesomely designed bottle and a good label. Still to work on the label but almost finished making the model of the bottle.

It started off as a solid works 3D model but not i have had the mold CNCed and had the two halves vacuum formed. This was the best way to get a really authentic model.

This is the two halves of the mold smoothed down and stuck together.  I had to stick them together to make sure that the two sides were flush.

I had to add 9mm MDF to the base so i could get the right shape when vacuum forming.

The mold on the vacuum former.

The mold and the formed plastic over the top.

Removing all of the excess plastic where the 9mm MDF was with a tool called a 'Razor saw'. not as cool as it sounds.

The two formed parts next to each other. not glued together yet, that is tomorrows job.

That is a whole days worth of work. It took a lot more time than i thought it would but i managed to get this far. I'll get some more pictures up when it's all completed.