Sharing the fails...
I was looking through my image folder for this project and found some early design rejects. At some point I thought these all were pretty awesome looking, but quickly realized their flaws. These are quite different, but the design cycle was pretty compressed and this only represents about 2 calendar days of work.
This was my first concept. My idea here was trying to use one common plate everywhere possible. While I am sure it would be rigid. The bottom cries out for a single plate across. That would have killed the scalability...FAIL
Here is a minor refinement. This cleaned things up a little, but again, the bottom still looks very clunky. the feet are OK, but I like the current ones better....FAIL
At ORD Camp I attended a few talks on visualization and graphical brainstorming. A great one by
Graphic Facilitator Brandy Festo was awesome. One topic that was discussed was how some of our presentation tools can make anything look good and it is often best to present in more of a sketch mode in the early stages. It also implies that the design done when the presentation is too polished. When all the work is in CAD this can be difficult, but there are "sketchy" renders and you can remove all color. I think I get into the mode of trying to sell my ideas to myself and others too soon when I am really still in brainstorm mode. Unfortunately this talk happened after the design was done.
One day I want to work for a company (or own one) that hires graphic facilitators.