Mickey and Minnie Hot Rods

A while back the folks at Kid Trax were working on a 6V ride-on quad for Mickey and Minnie Mouse.  They sought to create something beyond a standard children's ride-on, something clearly reflecting a classic Mickey aesthetic and not something adapted from generic design, like a lunch box with a sticker.  I was called in by the creatives at Disney Consumer Products to help them from the ground up in creating the look.   

Right from the start I was leaning toward a retro feel,  taking cues from the 1950s coupes and souped up 40s models. Something that echoed the era of classic core Disney characters. .. Still, it wasn't a car in which to sit but a straddle rider, so the overall configuration would still resemble a typical modern quad.  It offered some aesthetic challenges in exploring a range of looks from which to choose.

Here are the initial rough sketches of some possibilities I came up with. The perennial Mickey ears are already apparent in the design, the 'gears' motif intentionally tying into the 'Mickey's Clubhouse' show aesthetic, a very popular Disney show at the time;

They did like the old hot rod coupe look, leaning toward C and D the most, C being the final choice.
The next step was to tighten it up and create the Minnie version.
.. Ending up with this;

In this post-modern era of 26" rims and thin rubber, I found myself reveling in the notion of big fat white-walls and chrome hubs.
Decidedly old school.


.. This is another one of those cool projects where the final product ended up looking virtually identical to my work (Well done, Kid Trax!).  Again, it's uncommon, as often so many hands are involved in creating and producing toys,  so it's very satisfying and I take it as a complement. On a more practical and professional level I view these as an example of design efficacy and good communication.
Hopefully my colleagues and contacts see it as another good reason to call on me.

the Apollo 11 telephone

Up until virtually everyone started using cel phones as the norm, novelty telephones really enjoyed a lot of popularity in the world of consumer electronics. 
While hard wired phones were standard items in homes and businesses, companies like Telemania made their mark in creating all kinds of wild and fun telephones tailored to all kinds of interests.  Most of them were license driven, but not all.  The diner phone that I designed for them is just one example.

In the late 1990s I was approached by MH Segan to design a telephone commemorating the Apollo 11 lunar mission.
The basic design would have a small scale model of the historic landing event, complete with a little Neil Armstrong.  This would all be on the phone base which would also be comprised of the dialing mechanism, some NASA type components and an engraved plaque.   In early discussions it was decided the handset and cord would be typical of the period, but they wanted some styling exploration done for the rest.  For one thing, touch-tone buttons were still relatively new in 1969 and they wanted to see some variations with and without the recently supplanted rotary mechanism.  After drawing up all of the universal elements going into the design I worked up about 7 different approaches to the rest;

Having liked elements of both C and D,  I was directed by Segan to work up one more drawing that would best represent all of the elements and qualities they wanted to see in the final;

..and here is the final rendering, classic black lacquer finish with chrome touches;

Looney Toons webcams

This Looney Tunes webcam ranks high among the fun licensed electronics on which I've worked over the years. Designed for M.H. Segan back in the 90s, the idea was simply applying a classic Looney Tunes character to a free-standing webcam using some plausible theme.  This focused partly on working around the webcam lens and how to either conceal it or incorporate it into the theme. 

Here are the examples of that exploration;

The duplicate Bugs and Marvin designs was a result of further theme exploration, as these were the characters they preferred.
Ultimately going with Marvin, I was asked to render up both options for the final;

Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine - iPod touch dock/player clock

This novelty electronic was designed specifically for Apple's iPod touch.
What car doesn't have a stereo? And the notion of an RC vehicle that doubles as an iPod dock/player seems like a novelty to me. Any number of cool vehicles present themselves as a candidate for such a concept, but the application of a perennial license like Scooby-Doo was one way to get this concept across in a way that would appeal to teens and baby boomers. Especially if there's some neat animated feature to play with.  As much for a Nick@Nite watcher as the Sharper Image shopper.

My illustrations show the dual function;


Here's the Mystery Machine in its static state, the iPod touch shows scale and rough position where it drops into the slot dock on the van's rooftop.




Open up the back end and its display becomes the TV screen on the inside of the van.
The wall speakers function for stereo sound, the mirror ball spins, and the sculpted Scooby bobs his head in time with the music (much like your average iPet).
The tail lights function as manual controls for the iPod, and the license plate is an LCD display for track number, volume level, or even AM FM signal.



Spin Scooby around, and he can join you while you view any videos you may have stored.
The same LCD screen displays running time, or can function in clock mode.

The Diner Phone

Some years ago I worked on a series of novelty electronic items for Segan Animations and Telemania. They've been forerunners in novelty electronics for years and they still continue to come up with crazy concepts for telephones. The pleasure of designing stuff like this is in the attention to detail they put into them, and this was no exception.

I had initially done some design work on their Barbie telephone and clock radio, and they liked what I had done enough to bring me in on designing a phone that looked like an old mid-century dining car.
They provided me with the basic idea and how it would function. The roof of the diner would remove to become the hand set, while it revealed the interior of the diner.

Oh, and when the phone rings it plays Bill Haley's 'Rock Around The Clock'.

I spent some time researching different classic dining car diners, combining the classic elements like glass block, stainless steel, and using a palate of red, black and white.
I presented them with this marker rendering for inspiration, and they told me to run with it.

Once we had a defined look it was a matter of fleshing out the interior, which wasn't difficult from a design standpoint. I had already seen enough and had even eaten in a few of these kinds of dining cars because there were still a few around where I lived at the time.

I generated a 3/4 view of the inside, then added in some characters, since they felt it should have more personality.
Once again, I drew from archetypes of that era; a teenage boy and bobbysoxer holding hands and sharing a malt, a traveling 'Fuller Brush' salesman, a jolly short-order cook, a counter waitress, and a policeman interacting with a mischievous kid.

































I took details of the inside figures and generated larger turn-around drawings to give the sculptor something specific to work with.

A couple of years after I worked on this I ended up meeting the artist who did all the sculpting for this project. We both shared a laugh over the details that went into it, and he thanked me for providing him more than he needed to do the work.
The figures in this diner would only be about 3/4 of an inch tall.











Toward the end they decided the free-standing neon sign for "Joe's Diner" was a little much, so they asked me to generate a series of alternatives, one of which would be used on the diner itself so no base would be needed.
Here are some of the variations I came up with;






































In the end this is what the final product looked like;




Here is the rendering for the Barbie clock radio I had done;


Of course there are always projects that never make it to the store shelf. The following is a rendering for a proposed "Wizard of Oz" Emerald City phone that, while fun, was simply too elaborate to be cost effective.

But I did have a lot of fun designing it.