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Geometric package designs for snacks are coming from all directions. Doritos has had a conceptual design overhaul, making a play on its famous triangular snack shape. 

Impact extrusion is used to create this new Coke can redesign. Looks cool, I just hope it feels cool and can match the structural integrity of the current can.

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Design can sometimes be left to the consumer, and this is an example of how that can work. Allowing consumers the ability to engage in the process of building what they are buying is a great way to ensure a satisfied customer every time. More companies should choose this route of custom ordering.

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Like any other child, I believe crayons were my starting point. Crayons on paper, crayons on cardboard, crayons on walls. Rubbing onto textures, coloring within the lines and even chewing a few crayons. Then I graduated to colored pencils and markers. At this stage, I am mostly talking about dried-out, hand-me-down markers and colored pencil stubs from the art bins in grade school.  

Next, I moved up to graphite pencils ranging from 6B down to 2H. They were commonly under lock and key by my art teacher and were soon followed by Prismacolor brand colored pencils. To have access to Prismacolors was the touchstone of any art student, because that meant your work was respected enough by your instructor to have any color imaginable at your fingertips, and you could hand sharpen them with an Exacto knife. Reaching a greater level of artistic ability opened my grip to bigger and better things like watercolors. New media meant new materials to draw on as well: heavy paper, watercolor tablets and spiral-bound sketchbooks.

College then provided me with the marker rendering experience, old-school style. The thin, accurate Prismacolors of the past were set aside for thick, two-sided rendering markers. Marker rendering had me balling up cotton swabs and smearing baby powder on the surface of marker paper, hoping that I moved in such a fluid motion that it was a ‘one take wonder’ that I would not have to correct. I even learned to inject alcohol into the old markers to revive the dying pens in my small collection. Markers were cool, but markers were time consuming and messy.

All of these different drawing instruments through school led me to a crossroads where style and execution met technology. The next tool to be learned was the computer mouse. 

This challenge was an advancement in my hand and eye coordination like I had not seen since I had first learned to grip a crayon. Learning to use a computer mouse was almost like going back to step one. So many advancements in technology had taken place as I had progressed from crayons to markers that I understood the new standard was the computer mouse. By training my artistic eye to communicate with my index finger and palm, I could bridge that gap between new interface and the elements of design that I had learned through my early years of art education. 

Just as I had learned to grip my crayon and coordinate the far reach of my imagination to the surface of the paper with the movement of my hand, I had mastered the mouse. I went through college learning to use design programs with a clicking mouse. At home, at school and at work I reached out intuitively to grasp the mouse as I worked on any project, click-clicking away. But here is where it gets tricky — as I moved into the design world upon graduation, I had to adjust to a new technology that, once again, brings me back to step one again. The Wacom. 

The Wacom uses an interactive pen display that had me training my hands and eyes to once again adjust to writing on a new surface. No more crayons on cardboard. No more Prismacolor in a sketchbook. No more cotton swabs and alcohol soaked rendering markers. Everything I needed; every tool, every color, every texture within reach of a writable surface. No more dirty palms or stained fingertips. No more crumbled paper, wasted on a bad stroke. The Wacom was revolutionary in how I designed. 

Today, I grip the Wacom pen with the same loose grip as I did when I learned to scribble with a crayon. I select my pen tip, choose my color and draw as I so simply did when I learned so long ago. The Wacom interface that I use today has been so well designed that the action of simulating the crayon in hand is intuitive. I can’t wait to witness the next advancement of the writing tool. I imagine that will include speaking with my hands and illustrating ideas in 3D.  I’m ready, and I can not wait!

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John Caswell Design offers a few not-so-conventional designs, including a chair named “zippy.” Assembled unlike any other chair, zippy is held together with zip ties. Other designs include two-legged chairs, a mirror comb set, and rubber infused wood table named “grippy.” Be sure to take a look; seeing this designer’s imagination in motion will definitely stir your imagination!

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