Quarantimes: Products That Never Made It Out

"phenotyp" (phenotyp)
04/14/2020 at 11:25 • Filed to: sketch, industrial design, concept, concept design, consumer electronics

A handheld radar/photometric scanner for optimizing the garment industry’s sizing and patterning processes.

Worked for over a year on this one; conference calls every Wednesday night with Philly, Vancouver, SoCal, Taiwan, and China. Got to the point of being ready to pull the trigger for tooling, then the client pulled the plug.

Some Dell micro-desktop PCs from 2007, what later became the Studio Hybrid.

Back in 2007/8, I led a program with Flextronics to do gaming desktops, all-in-ones, and small form factor desktops. Super, super fun program. All cancelled during the financial crisis of 2008.

Here’s a functional prototype done for Microsoft, back in 2005, for the 2006 CES show. Microsoft was showing their UMPC concept; we designed and built a few docking concepts for them, and this one we actually built for Ballmer to show on stage.

Here’s a couple wearable 3-D holographic display concepts from 2014, for Leia (who partnered with RED cameras) :

2009: Dell Studio

Electric-car charger, 2014:

I still want one.

Here’s a thin client small notebook concept for AMD, back in 2006.

By no means close to an exhaustive list— when you work in the industrial design consulting business, probably 98% of the work you do ends up in the trash can, or disappeared in some closet in a gian t corporate HQ. Every once in a while, though, something comes through. When you’re really lucky, it might even come out like you’d hoped or intended.

Hope y’all are doing all right.

DISCUSSION (18)

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > phenotyp
04/14/2020 at 11:29

I quite like those all-in-one PC designs....more colors are good, and that metallic brown looks awesome!

and 100 more > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
04/14/2020 at 11:35

I really like the SFF desktop unit that looks like it’s frozen in ice!

benjrblant > phenotyp
04/14/2020 at 11:35

Hey! Did you get to watch the Dieter Rams documentary? https://www.ohyouprettythings.com/free

phenotyp > benjrblant
04/14/2020 at 11:39

It’s been waiting in a separate browser window for me to have time to do it! I just have to get to it today or tomorrow...

Hustwit’s stuff has always been great, and Rams is such an enormous influence on so many of us. One of my design heroes.

phenotyp > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
04/14/2020 at 11:41

Thanks, that was a super fun program with Flextronics. We were talking about doing 3D patterning in injection-molded parts, military-grade ceramics for notebooks, all sorts of cool stuff. Then came fall 2008, and they killed all their R&D stuff like that.

benjrblant > phenotyp
04/14/2020 at 11:44

Dieter is everything I wish I could’ve done/been. His design principles are so inspiring and honest.

I think that film gets changed out today, so watch it before this evening!

phenotyp > benjrblant
04/14/2020 at 11:45

OH SHIT, it’s the 14th already!

Fuck, days are just blurring together. I thought it was the 13th.

Chariotoflove > phenotyp
04/14/2020 at 11:55

That’s really cool. A lot of that stuff could be props in SciFi shows.

WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI > phenotyp
04/14/2020 at 12:07

Kewl

phenotyp > Chariotoflove
04/14/2020 at 12:11

I would love to design shit for films.

Chariotoflove > phenotyp
04/14/2020 at 12:13

I wonder how you get a gig like that. Probably have to know someone.

phenotyp > Chariotoflove
04/14/2020 at 12:17

Some fellow CCS car design grads, a few years before my time there, ended up doing the design work for a little film called Star Wars Episode 1 (Doug Chiang, Ed Natividad, and Jay Schuster were all CCS transportation design grads).

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > phenotyp
04/14/2020 at 12:36

A shame, would’ve been some cool tech!

Chariotoflove > phenotyp
04/14/2020 at 13:04

Maybe they’re your in. One can daydream anyway.

phenotyp > Chariotoflove
04/14/2020 at 13:35

Don’t know if you were around for this/these

https://oppositelock.kinja.com/do-you-like-cars-do-you-like-star-wars-of-course-you-512657952

I did a post on some cars I did for Hasbro’s Star Wars group that got some traction years ago. It was a super fun project, can’t ask for more than that (especially when you get paid for it, but unfortunately they never went forward with the car project with Lucas).

Chariotoflove > phenotyp
04/14/2020 at 13:43

I think I was around, but I don’t remember those. Looks like fun.

Manwich - now Keto-Friendly > phenotyp
04/14/2020 at 14:22

That Leio watch looks like it would have been cool

phenotyp > Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
04/14/2020 at 14:44

That was the hardest presentation I ever had to make.

A great product idea, some great concepts, not rendered and presented the way I wish they had been, but we were cut out before I presented the concepts. The investors wanted some big name on the design, and I ended up presenting a bunch of shit that’s never gonna go anywhere.

At least they said they loved our stuff, but Sand Hill Road is a very hard place.