I finally found a lid!

In Morrisons I found some lids used for cat food tins but when I put the device in there was a slight bump caused by the size. This frustrated me and I was tempted to just leave it like that. However I thought of the idea to double up the lids and make the device double insulated which allowed more room in between and plus I do not have to worry about the can being short circuited by the tin. This also allows the lid to be easily removed without the worry of the circuit board collapsing. I can then glue the lids together and than hopefully becomes successful. I had to do some test drill holes to see the size, the texture that gets create and how everything will be placed. After a few tries I proceeded to the real thing!




I decided not to glue the two lids together because I can imagine some dodgy shape as the result and some glue being visible... So I decided to tape it together carefully and unoticeably and this made a more secure smooth finish. For the switch I had coloured a piece of plastic and cut it to shape and then glue it to the device and when pushed and held down, sound is emitted.




I had to drill a larger hole for the speaker's "bum" to rest into in order to make more room for the device to sit inside properly.


I'm very happy with the lids and think it was much better than the shoe polish container because it is now less bulky and securely tight on the cans which if otherwise could have caused some serious damage, both to the producs and user. ALso if I was to make the shoe polish container to stick on the can magnetically, then this could have risked the device to be short circuited and would be a useless device.

I have inserted the sound system into the dvd's and did come across some difficulties because I had short circuited the Kill Bill one so had to rush to Clintons to get some more cards.. which were double the price I payed on Ebay! Anyway I wanted to also colour the white tabs that tiggered the device to activate black, so used a pernament marker. Little did I know that this somehow affected the tigger and it wouldn't activate it. It took me a while to figure that out and then when I did I managed to find some tabs that I had thrown away because I thought it was no use. After changing it over I used black tape to stick it down and carefully placed everything in line. Another problem that came was that when I opened up the dvd it would speak with a chance of 50/50... this was because the tab wasnt fully or freely being pushed into place for it to be activated and ready when opened. So I had glued on a little notch which will push the tab back into place making the sound system to be activated everytime when opened so I wouldn't worry about it. I'm not sure whether to hide the device with a blank card, but I quite like allowing the viewer to see the device system and how it was constructed. Something to think about I guess

I had went to the 3D workshop today to ask how I could cut down the wires in the device. Neal was very helpful and had cut down half of the size where I would only use the speaker and the circuit board. He also said that I could use the white disc which was the microphone, and swap it to make it like a speaker because speakers and microphones are practically the same but do different things when we need it to be. We did swap it over but the sound wasnt as loud and clear as the original speaker. I wanted to swap the speaker and microphone because the microphone is smaller and flatter than the speaker and can improve the product significantly, unfortunately in this case it wasn't working for me.

This was great because the shoe polish tin that I spray painted earlier was looking very bulky as a product and not stackable friendly. Using a sealable lid like a McVities biscuit lid would work well but I still face the same problem with space. With the reduced circuit board I have reduced this problem but not enough... but will need to venture out again to find a suitable lid or something.

A friend of mine today thanked me for a present I had given them for Christmas which was a leather oyster card holder because it became very useful and durable. After the phone call I started to look at my own oyster card holder and I started to think how useful mine had been to me because I carry a variety of cards. I then began to think how I can recognise the different cards because of the colour and how sometimes when I handle cards at work I can guess the type of card the customer is using 80% of the time.

This idea then led to how do partially sighted people differentiate their own cards. And how useful it would be to help them distinguish a card from another like their oyster card against their Master Card. I thought it would be a very useful invention to have an oyster similar to mine.



Here is a basic net of a traditional oyster card holder that I had made out of paper... I thought that there could be braile on the front and the back of the cover saying which card is which.



Inside is where the card would be inserted. However I thought that the idea of implimenting sound into this but it would be way too chunky to integrate it into it... If I had enough time to find a smaller and flatter device then the product could be further developed.

After a few sketches and disgrams of how to make this product work nicely... I decided to actually move away from the oyster card holder frame and thougth that each card could hang off a keyring... this allows the cards to be freely moved around and can easily see each card. Bold cards are a must and braille can be placed. Along with the oyster card I had included Visa and Mastercard, and also a medical card holder since most people may loose their sight due to health problems. I also brought a large keyring and might later attached one of those hook keyrings you find when you absail....

After looking at the 10 products for the final pieces, I found it hard to imagine how I could integrate sound system into the plaster and cereal boxes. The difficulties would be how would I create a cover for it and print text onto it? Would I create a net and stick it together, woudl I reuse the packaging? Could I reverse the box then print onto it? How would I create a bold background colour on it? So I have decided to scrap the creael and plaster boxes because it would be too difficult to handle with and instead thought of the idea of creating dvd cases for the visually impaired. This idea came across to me because I wanted to keep to the theme of trying to distinguish different genres of the same items (i.e. distinguishing different food contents within each tin) and thought of the idea of a talking book. A talking book would be fascinating but unconvenient because it would very bulky.. and that is how I led to the idea of the dvd cover.



The first film that came to my head when I thought of creating a dvd cover for the partially blind was Kill Bill. The colour theme was a contrasting yellow and black and I thought it would be an obvious and well known link to the film and the text. I constructed the layout of the cover and had to research into what was on the original dvd cover. I've stripped the context down to:

Starring
Director

Writers

Producers

Run Time
and the certificate


I did think about whether to include the description of the film but the original context was quite a paragraph and would of taken up much of the room. I thought it would be interesting to have the credits included though especially the option to know how long the film last for. I also thought the certification was important because what if the visually impaired person was a mother who would want to buy a dvd for their child? They would need to know whether they were old enough and this will remove the dependancy of asking someone if it wasn't available or readable from the cover.

After printing the cover I affixed the braille onto it too for the title on the front and the spine. I then plan to drill some holes similar to the can lid idea and have the button on the front so the user can locate and hold down the button to hear what film they are selecting.

Other films I have thought of extending this to was Batman returns (Black and yellow), Sin City (Black and White), Avatar (Blue and yellow) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Yellow and Black). I thought that Avatar and Sin City would be a better line up against Kill Bill because of the visual colours when put together.

I tested drilling the holes into the dvd cover and because of the plastic film of the cover, the texture afterwards creates an unpresentable surface that I don't really like. I was thinking of the speaker holes to be laser cut so I went to a laser cutter who explained that the plastic would melt if they did it. I didn't want to hand cut the individual holes myself because I know this will look unprofessional, square like and worse than the drilled holes. I then thought of the card where the devices came from where you would open the card to hear the greeting... I could integrate this into the dvd where the dvd is opened and it speaks. Its a simple solution and avoids the complication of the drilling. It would also make the product look neater too.

Braille gird

I've created a "braille grid" using the same dimensions as the braille I ordered from the RNIB during my research. From this I can affix my braille text and align it how I want. I am only going to do braille over the title and the quanities of the products beause not all of the brailled ingredients can fit and takes up alot of space.

With the braille I have carefully used a blunt pin and pushed it on the other side of the paper like old style braille technique. This technique has made my hand painful after a while but have plastered up my fingers and worn a glove for protection. I had to try 3 attempts of each design to master the pressure of pushing the pin because I kept punching holes through them all. After a few attempts I have finally successfully made the braille on my 3 tinned cans. I have really liked the way the braille has come out and really think its a beautiful typeface (if i can call it that?). I think it gets easy to learn after constructing the braille together.

Letterpressing was very unsuccessful with the coloured paper because the ink wouldn't be bright enough to contrast againt it. This became very frustrating as for a product for the blind, an important detail is that the letters are sharp, precise and visibly contrasted against the paper. The only one that had become successful was the black against yellow as this was dark ink on light paper- it did not work the other way round. Travelling home I was thinking of alternative ways to create my text and went into Cass Art for any inspiration. I had thought of letter transfers (but the sizes for too small and it would be hard to create an accurate alignment of the text), stenciling (this would be the same as letter transfers and also the text would have stencil outlinings) and also reconsidered screen printing but this wasn't a successful technique as it wasn't crisp enough. I then considered printing the labels off using a printer- this would enable me to compose the text easily, have a much clearer print and most importantly have a range of colours. Although this is a cost efficient solution I fear that it is a quite boring technique and quite flat.

After printing the labels off a laserjet printer, I felt this solution was much better than the letterpressing and screenprinting because everything was clear, precise and contrasting. I began to think this was the best solution and actually quite like the effect it has, its made the label much clearer and I am able to braille into the paper. Also I was able to create a contrasting background on the title of the cans to make it stand out more and I think it works visually better as there is a main attraction to the eyes. I think it would make locating the name of the label better and faster too. Although I have enjoyed the tecnhiques of letterpressing, I wouldn't have been able to do the contrasting colours very well which is why I will continue to use the printer solution with the rest of my project. Also I was contemplating whether to use/avoid capital letters in my ingredients because the RNIB recommended to avoid using capital letters. To answer my question I called up the MertonVision Centre again asking what to do and the woman kindly advised me to use Arial typeface and type the context exactly how it is and not to change it whatsoever. And so I have done this across my labels and will do for everything else.

With the contrasting background on the main title of the label