As a web / flash designer it’s not often that I venture into the real physical world to make things … mostly because I have no patience and largely because I inevitably cock it up.

Sure we at Martian can and do provide a range of print services but, to be honest, these don’t normally involve much more than a great design translated into ink onto some flat surface … usually a business card or a promotional piece. Just what your typical design house does really.

That’s why Tony and I love Ponoko.

We can use the same tools that we would for digital design and make real world physical products.

Now the great part here is that we don’t need to know how to use power tools, we don’t have to worry about ruling straight lines or cutting things just so. We don’t have to go to the hardware shop and be told “I’m sorry, you can’t buy a sheet of translucent green plastic here”. Ponoko takes away all of these barriers.

Ponoko gives me, a web designer that has never made anything other than a money box at wood work class when I was about 12 and a wonky shelf for my stereo about 3 years ago, the ability to make physical real world objects with the press of a button. It’s absolutely fantastic!

So how does Ponoko work for a graphic designer or web designer?

It’s pretty simple really.

1. As a designer you already know how to use Adobe Illustrator.

2. As a designer you can’t help but get excited about new technology and new ways to make cool stuff from your mac (or pc).

3. As a designer you already have the perfect client base. People that need creative solutions.

Here’s an example.

We had a client that came to us to put together a series of illustrations for a workbook they were creating. The client’s logo had a certain tear drop shape and along with the workbook the client wanted to distribute a tear dropped shaped whiteboard as part of the package.

Now, we weren’t in the mood to take a set of french curves and hacksaw to a set of whiteboards from warehouse stationery … and we really didn’t want to get some white cardboard laminated (how cheap is that). This would have been something that most designers would have put into the “too hard” basket.

But not for us. Lets custom make a whiteboard for our client with Ponoko! … and while we’re at it, lets etch their logo into the whiteboard for that added “Wow I can’t believe you did that” factor.

The process was so simple.

Just download the starter kit from ponoko,
set up artwork in Adobe Illustrator,
export from Illustrator as an EPS,
upload EPS to Ponoko,
choose the material (whiteboard),
press ‘Make’.

A few days late a perfectly cut and etched custom built tear dropped shaped whiteboard arrived on our doorstep. It was just so easy. Later that week a nice cheque arrived from our very happy client.

I truly believe that Ponoko has brought a revolutionary capability to designers in much the same way that Apple did in 1985 with the introduction of the Laserwriter. Instead of settling for our real word products as printed peices of paper we can now make them quicky and painlessly out of stainless steel or bamboo or acrylics or aluminium or pretty much anything else that we can imagine.

To learn more about Ponoko check out this video from TV3 News, New Zealand or just visit www.ponoko.com

Running a design business poses a lot of challenges. One of the most obvious ones is that the bulk of your income is generated from the work that you charge for and, more often than not, that work is charged out on an hourly basis.

Keeping track of all the time we spent on a job used to be a real pain for us mostly because we weren’t disciplined enough to keep proper job sheets. This resulted in us often taking a very conservative estimate when it came to totaling up a bill. We’d think ‘Surely it didn’t take us 3 hours to render that piece of artwork’ or ‘Where did Tuesday go and why haven’t I finished anything?”.

Knowing where your hours are going is really very important. Be it billable hours or non billable hours you need to know what’s going on.

Over Christmas 2007 we decided we had better pull our socks up and get serious about tracking our time.  From the traditional job sheets, to stop watch systems and more complex software (which was just overkill) we tested a lot.
The best tool for the job was coincidentally the last system we tested. A web based tool from www.getharvest.com

Harvest have a wonderfully simple system for monitoring time and it’s ideal for a design business like Martian. It’s 100% web based, has a very low entry cost and can be operated with a single click via a very cool desktop widget. You can create your various customers, projects and tasks. Set up billable and non-billable tasks with varying rates and get a very accurate picture of where your precious time is being spent. It also does timesheets too. Nice :)

Overall we give Harvest two martian thumbs up!
If you are in an industry that needs to keep track of your time then you really should check out Harvest.

www.getharvest.com

Once again the call of Ponoko was heard in the Martian Lab and soon another fun laser cutting project was underway. This time it was a Martian styled business card holder - something else we could hand out to our Martianeer customers as a way of saying “hey, we think you’re just swell…

What we ended up with is a simple 2-piece slot design that requires no glue and is both light and stable. And of course having our Martian guy peeking over the cards is just too cool.

I’ve always been of the opinion that Tuesdays are a bit of a nothing day. Monday is eventful … Wednesday is the middle of the week .. and Thursday is the day before Friday. Tuesdays on the other hand are generally a bit bland.

Not this Tuesday though because instead of doing customer work and getting a pay check, we decided to kick the day off with a bit of fun and complete our first Ponoko project; The Boomerang.

We had a huge amount of fun working on this project. The Ponoko system is fantastic. It’s easy to use and gives a brilliant end result.

Below are some photos of the finished Boomerang and above you should be able to see the Boomerang in the Ponoko Showroom. Needless to say we can’t wait to create our next piece of Ponoko goodness. :)

A lot of people think that designers push the magic logo button on the computer and a new logo is instantly created.

Well its actually a lot more involved than that.

Read more »

Graham Potter of Life Code came to the Martians with a plan. To help kids that are either on the wrong track or about to step onto it. To aid in this he was going to need some tools in the form of Workbooks, which is where we came in.

Graham outlined the style of imagery he wanted and “sha-zam”, the 12 page MyMatrix Workbook and complimentary Facilitator Book were born. Well, not just like that, there was a fair amount of effort and designery doodling involved too.

A pilot version of the program is now running with sets of the Workbooks being distributed along with the rest of the program material to Social Workers around the North Island. If all goes well the program will go nation wide and Graham will have the chance to see his idea change some lives for the better. To find out more about Graham and the work he does visit: www.lifecodematrix.com

We were lucky enough to be asked to participate in the Ponoko beta testing program. Ponoko for those of you that haven’t come across it yet, is a place where you can make, share and sell real world products designed on your computer. It’s a hugely clever concept with some smart people piloting it.

Before we started the beta test we had to have an idea of what we were going to make. We wanted to make something a bit unusual and in keeping with our 80’s sci-fi movie upbringing. We decided to resurrect an old joke idea for a sci-fi boomerang complete with nasty blades and sci-fi goodness. Tony made a quick sketch and the idea began to take shape.

Read more »

If Martian were ever to design a car chances are it would look quite a lot like the incredible Carver One (pictured).

There is no doubt that the Carver One is a truly stunning feat of engineering and something that has to be experienced to be fully appreciated. There is nothing quite like zooming around corners at almost 45 degrees! You can’t do that in your porsche … well … not unless you’re 2 seconds away from putting it into a ditch.

We’re very fortunate to have the opportunity to be working with Peter from Carver New Zealand and have thus far put together a nice web page for those wishing to advertise on the Carver One (www.carveradvertising.co.nz), some sign-age for the Carver One and are currently in the process of producing some great material for his display at an upcoming lifestyle show.

Ponoko is an amazing new service that allows you to take ideas from your feeble human brain, draw them up in illustrator or your favourite vector graphics program, export them to EPS and upload them to ponoko.com to get a real life product produced. Its intuitive, has great help, is very easy to use and oh soooooo cool!

Once your product is made you can get it delivered to your door or leave it in the ponoko system for others to browse or even purchase from you (cha-ching!). It’s quite a revolutionary service and let me tell you there is nothing quite so cool as unpacking your ponoko package and seeing your creation in real life.

So what do a couple of Martians make? A table lamp? A coffee table? hmmmmmmmm … ooh I know. .. lets bring a 10 year old design for a sci-fi weapon to life. The Boomerang!

Stay tuned for a walk through of how we created this unusual object.