Enclosure Designs - What Inspires You?

[BuddytheReow]

What are some general sources of inspiration to customize the enclosures? Do you guys always have something in your head? Google? Do you try to do a play on the circuit name? I'm at a loss what to do with some of mine and would love to hear your thoughts.

 

[Dali]

What are some general sources of inspiration to customize the enclosures? Do you guys always have something in your head? Google? Do you try to do a play on the circuit name? I'm at a loss what to do with some of mine and would love to hear your thoughts.

All of those.

I like renaming PCB (when I got ideas). It could be anything.

My Green Ringer was renamed "Green Cyclop" because there's no control, just one LED in center so it made sense to me.

Guild Foxey (Big Muff) => Fripp73. Because Robert Fripp use that pedal 73-79.

Raincoat OD => Flat Earth Overdrive. Because the PCB had this written to it: "We don't have time to do science"!

Zapper => Ms. Pinky. Because the enclosure was flashy pink and it's a Zappa reference (I also put a pyjama and slippers on it)

But for some I don't change the name: UniCab, Magnet Delay, Daydream and others It really depends.

 

[Betty Wont]

I'm always inspired by my sharpie and the next project. I write the control labels on the raw box and move on to the next adventure. Looking at the the quality of the OUTSIDE of the the boxes vs the INSIDE of the boxes around here, I think most people are more interested in pretty paintjobs than clean quality circuitry. I've heard that as a gripe about other builders from my customers too.

 

[SYLV9ST9R]

What are some general sources of inspiration to customize the enclosures? Do you guys always have something in your head? Google? Do you try to do a play on the circuit name? I'm at a loss what to do with some of mine and would love to hear your thoughts.

Just browsing through font libraries, once you've settled on a name can be a great way to spark a design idea. But yes, playing with variations or ideas stemming from the original or pedalpcb name of the pedal is also a good way to go.
And there are tons of quality public domain photos and images from museum and archives available online, so you can easily find something nice and unique with just a bit of digging.

I'm always inspired by my sharpie and the next project. I write the control labels on the raw box and move on to the next adventure. Looking at the the quality of the OUTSIDE of the the boxes vs the INSIDE of the boxes around here, I think most people are more interested in pretty paintjobs than clean quality circuitry. I've heard that as a gripe about other builders from my customers too.

I don't agree with you, as I think people here are interested in both. Speaking for myself, I do like putting the time to creating a nice-looking, albeit simple design to accompany what I've built. I will choose sound and function over looks in a pedal, but also, to me a bland or random-looking pedal is a bit . And for cleanliness of the circuit, you can't expect people new to this hobby to be perfect from the get-go, but I do think that's one aspects that you tend to improve with more builds. If you're building professionally, then I agree you have to provide a level of quality. But you know, straight caps won't improve the sound, nor will a nice paint job

 

[Jovi Bon Kenobi]

Old film posters (Criterion collection is a good example, also google "Polish film posters") and LP's of artists that might use said pedal are always inspiring for me. If I find a typeface I like I make a note of it in a doc I have. A huge helper is whatthefont.com. It finds similar or exact fonts by uploading a screen image grab.
I've never done decals and only use what I have on hand, which is a P-Touch label maker, but I made a tutorial that goes into detail the process...here

Brother P-Touch Tutorial

What is the Brother P-Touch? An inappropriate monk? One of the most unfortunately named products in modern times? Yes and No. It's also the device I use to label my pedals. I wanted to create this thread to show my process of how I utilize this machine since a few people asked how I do my...

forum.pedalpcb.com

 

[Barry]

I use google to find images and look around for interesting fonts, I mostly use the PedalPCB names, but do occasionally use something else

Edit: I'm happy to share anything I've done, either Illustrator files or PDF

 

[dlazzarini]

What are some general sources of inspiration to customize the enclosures? Do you guys always have something in your head? Google? Do you try to do a play on the circuit name? I'm at a loss what to do with some of mine and would love to hear your thoughts.

All of the above. Some come easier than others for me. Sometimes it’ll have nothing to do with the pedal, I just dig a certain graphic. I, like you am currently at a loss with a few right now. Like writers block. I’m blank. It’s holding me up from starting the boards because my ocd won’t let me start till the enclosure is done. The Spatialist is killin me right now. Nothing is coming to me.

 

[mjh36]

I use google to find images and look around for interesting fonts, I mostly use the PedalPCB names, but do occasionally use something else

Edit: I'm happy to share anything I've done, either Illustrator files or PDF

Thanks man, I know I would very much like one of your pre-made Illustrator files for my next build. I don't have Illustrator, but I would like to try Tayda's more streamlined UV print submission. No build planned yet, but I'll look at past posts for ideas.

And to answer op's question. Basically just Google. There's sites that have thousands of themed background images for free. I like 80's themed background images for example I could browse those for hours.

 

[Rob]

I get inspired by cool patterns. The pedal format doesn't leave a ton of room for a masterpiece obviously - and you want the control labels to be legible, so i try to keep it simple. I've used the pattern from the carpet in The Shining before and some graphic-ey swirly thing, sort of like the EQD Plumes artwork. Another cool resource for inspiration is dribbble.com.

For colors,
https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel
is a good resource to make sure everything works together.

 

[Nostradoomus]

I usually find old weird old 1800s woodcut stuff, anatomical drawings, illustrations of medieval torture etc. That or silly things like the Duck Hunt dog.

 

[BuddytheReow]

This writer's block I have right now is killing me. Has anyone attempted painting? I'm almost afraid to open up some paints and just do whatever since I know I won't be happy with the end result.

 

[Barry]

This writer's block I have right now is killing me. Has anyone attempted painting? I'm almost afraid to open up some paints and just do whatever since I know I won't be happy with the end result.

jjjimi84 Paints his

Tommy

Here is a Tommy build I did a while back, really great pedal, very versatile. I painted this using acrylic paints, recreating Bob-omb from Super Mario. Here is a little demo I put together to showcase the different eq options and gain settings available. This was done using one dual...

forum.pedalpcb.com

 

[Nostradoomus]

I would if I didn’t have the artistic sensibilities of a 3 year old.

 

[HamishR]

I came top in art at school, studied design, and am now a photographer. I used to paint (pictures, not houses) and draw a lot. But deep down I am very much a minimalist. I love using the least to do the most. So my boxes have no graphics at all - I feel they should I guess but I doubt I would ever be happy with anything I put on them. For the most part I am anti-decoration. I don't like overly showy, shiny guitars. For a long time I gigged with a Setzer Sig Gretsch 6120 but I removed the pickguard, put a plain truss rod cover on it and regular knobs. So it's all about the shape of the guitar, not the bling.

Having said all that I am in awe of some of the beautiful boxes some of you guys do. The etched enclosures, the intricate designs, the simple designs with rubber stamps - fantastic. But if I ever decide to do some graphics it will be very minimal! At the very least I think I should label what the knobs do.

Years ago when I was getting motorbike parts powdercoated in texture black I took my TC Electronic Flashback Delay pedal enclosure and got it powdercoated too. So it has no graphics either. But it looks very cool!

 

[Jovi Bon Kenobi]

I came top in art at school, studied design, and am now a photographer. I used to paint (pictures, not houses) and draw a lot. But deep down I am very much a minimalist. I love using the least to do the most. So my boxes have no graphics at all - I feel they should I guess but I doubt I would ever be happy with anything I put on them. For the most part I am anti-decoration. I don't like overly showy, shiny guitars. For a long time I gigged with a Setzer Sig Gretsch 6120 but I removed the pickguard, put a plain truss rod cover on it and regular knobs. So it's all about the shape of the guitar, not the bling.

Having said all that I am in awe of some of the beautiful boxes some of you guys do. The etched enclosures, the intricate designs, the simple designs with rubber stamps - fantastic. But if I ever decide to do some graphics it will be very minimal! At the very least I think I should label what the knobs do.

Years ago when I was getting motorbike parts powdercoated in texture black I took my TC Electronic Flashback Delay pedal enclosure and got it powdercoated too. So it has no graphics either. But it looks very cool!

I feel ya. I tend to appreciate subtlety or understated aesthetic design choices. You know, with that history of yours, now I want to see what you could come up with...for labeling what the knobs do, haha. I dropped out of art school 25 years ago but it was always my dream as a wee one to have a career in something creative. That's pretty cool.

 

[BurntFingers]

I think of a name I like first then make the artwork around that, which mostly comes out totally unrelated to the name I came up with. Then I play around in illustrator, find the typeface that I think says something about the project, like if it's jagged and distorted, is it big bold clear, fat, sci-fi, italic, whatever and go from there.

If it makes me laugh then that's a great bonus. This is my hair metal circuit. I drew this on my couch. I can't draw for shit. Then I took a photo, vectorised it, and here it is. Bedroom guys unite.