I know many of you are designers and have all sorts of original ideas that you want to design from scratch. But we’re betting just about everyone will want to dive into a catalog of designs at least from time to time. Maybe it’s for a quick gift. Maybe you want a project when you only have an hour of time on a rainy afternoon. Or maybe you’re just too stingy with your time to design a low-creativity thing from scratch and would prefer to start with a template that you can personalize.
Right now there are some folks on our team who are working hard to make sure the designs catalog has stuff in it that you want to have.
So if you were catalog Queen/King for a Day (or week!), what would you have us filling the catalog with? Be as specific or as general as you want. Are there specific items you’re looking to print? Are there categories that you’re hoping we’ll have? Are you looking for the perfect 1-click-print designs or templates that you can embellish/personalize? Would you want beautiful 2D stuff because you’re not very artistic? Or would you want perfectly designed 3D stuff because you don’t have a brain for CAD?
Actually, I really plan on making a bunch of glowforge accessories, or thing that i think make the glowforge a better tool. I sure hope its going to be a great tool. But tweaking is part of making it perfect for me, and i would love to share those tweaks to anyone else that might want them.
I’d like to see solutions to common problems with a unique component.
Storage aids.
KitchenAid splash guards. (grin!)
Useful things that can be personalized.
Clever puzzles. (Puzzle boxes - love those.)
Anything cute. I’m a sucker for cute.
Seasonal stuff. (Easter bunnies/baskets in the spring, Spiders in the fall, Stocking Stuffers and Hannukah gifts)
Guy stuff. (They’re hard to buy for.)
Tool organizers.
Desk toys.
Baby stuff, in honor of our incoming crop of new forgers. (Baby shower decor.)
Wedding Stuff (themed and otherwise for showers)
Party centerpieces, tokens, trinkets.
Mini games that are takeoffs of old favorites in little cases for travel.
Leather category - purses, wallets, messenger bags, belts, jewelry, etc.
Fabric category - 3D pillow sculptures, animal pincushions, feathers, etc.
Acrylic category - edge lit designs, boxes, etc.
Hardwood category designs - whatever you can do with it
Plywood category - Everything
I’m looking forward to items that can be customized easily and resized accordingly.
What you did for Makerfaire was on the right track but I don’t want to have to depend on the trace feature. If someone comes to me and says they want a keepsake box with a photo engraved ontop, I would like to be able to give them a few options without spending hour of design time. Also I would like to be able to change the size of the item of an item or have multiple sizes to choose from.
So no particular items exactly but many items that are customizable and different sizes.
That could make quantities of one or two items worth my time to sell.
I would love to see leather goods…especially bags, like the one Dan made…but also other wearable leather goods…wallets, book covers, bracelets…
Lighting of any kind, but especially anything made with edge lit acrylic[quote=“soldiercoleman, post:5, topic:3160”]
I’m looking forward to items that can be customized easily and resized accordingly.
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I like @Jules and @Xabess’s lists–a combination of practical and fun objects. I love leathergoods, so I’d love to see things like leather bags, clothing, and accessories. I definitely would prefer them to be customizable.
It would neat to see some designs made specifically with Proofgrade Materials in mind. Like a tea-light kit with acrylic and wood that is paired with a design.
*hopper idea – print a design catalog code in UV ink on the proofgrade material for a free catalog design.
I would like to see some tutorial/inspiration designs. What I mean is some simple designs that demonstrate techniques that can be used in other designs.
One idea would be a living hinge box that has differently sized living hinges in the design. It would be a good way to demonstrate living hinges and show how varying the design changes it.
Ditto on the requests for leatherworking designs- without any real experience using the material I would love to have some existing designs that let me really focus on how to work with the leather. On that note, how about a few ‘introductory’ designs specifically tailored for different materials (leather vs wood vs acrylic and so on) to show off the strengths of each material? Perhaps living hinge for wood, edge lit for acrylic, etc. I suppose this sort of goes in hand with @joe’s tutorial designs idea!
I like many of the ideas posted already. Storage solutions will probably be high on the list, and no doubt my wife would like decorative items for the holidays and such. I would also like to see contraptions of some sort. The quad-copter from the promo video is a good example, though I’m thinking more along the lines of things that will operate by hand and such and use completely Glowforge-cut parts. Think gears and levers!
While I like the idea, I wonder what the rights are for items in the catalog? I’m not sure if you’re talking about a business transaction or like a project for a friend or something, but I would think that you wouldn’t have the permission to sell items that you download from the catalog, even if you have to pay for it, but I could be wrong.
I’m looking for mostly templates that I can throw engraving over!
Boxes! Lots of boxes. Hopefully some with different styles of joinery or unique ways to hide finger joints.
Wallet templates
board games and pieces.
Small home decorations
Keychain blanks!
I’m really just hoping to learn from designs and maybe pick up a few techniques I wouldn’t have thought about originally
(Plus one on some shallow jigs for altering the cut direction - that was something I planned to fiddle with, but having them available up front would be sweet.)
I’d love some 3D starter designs - that’s all new to me and it would be nice to have some available from the get go! Also ditto the easily customizable/resizable and leather goods.
I’d like to see mostly customizable stuff, although ultimately I’d think even the click-to-print items might have some room for customizing (eg text areas).
I’d also like to see the equivalent of clip art – little decorative bits that could be added to designs by non-graphic people like me. They’d be optimized so we’d know they would cut/engrave cleanly. I’m thinking the moral equivalent of all those 19th century rosette moldings and other trim parts.
Some of this will depend on the minimum practical transaction for the GF catalog. There are plenty of things I would buy if they cost well under a dollar, but would make an equivalent by hand if they cost way more.
All sorts of Starter or Tutorial projects. Something to help newbie laser folk get up to speed with the GF faster.
Such as:
various different kinds of testing templates (how to figure out what power/speed to use on different materials)
how to raster/engrave/cut/vector/etc
how to stipple (fake greyscale)
how to use the trace feature
how to use the embedded camera
how to use camera/software to take a picture, duplicate, rotate, resize, reposition
how to set up using two (or more) different materials at the same time (that tea light thingy would be a great start)
Any project or tutorial that your first thought is “that is just so obvious, I’m sure that will be intuitive to everyone”, even if that is true, doing the basics your way can still teach others a thing or two to enhance their own process.
