Pimp Your Gadgets
You’ve bought yourself a shiny new mobile phone or you might have just assembled a new PC and we’re sure you are happy with it. But there is always a feeling deep down inside that something is missing, there is something that makes you feel that this new gadget or device is not completely yours. We believe you, this feeling is present in almost all of us – the need to personalize or customize everything we own. Be it a mobile phone, a computer or even something as small as a flash drive, we need it to be unique and different from the one owned by the average Joe. So what can you actually do to make your gadget more like you, well that’s what we’re here to tell you.
There are many things that you can customize, but what we’re focusing on here, is all about our gadgets and other technology products. Even so, the few of us who admit to geekdom, will not shy away from wearing that attitude on t-shirts, shoes, etc. so there’s a bit about that too along the way.
The easiest thing to do for small handheld devices is to attach accessories to them. These could vary from small key chains or lanyards that can be attached to mobile phones. If you notice, most pen drives now days come with a small attachment option, you could easily use this to attach a lanyard of your choice, which makes the device different from the others available and at the same time makes it easy for you to identify.
For mobile phones, another option is buying a funky external cover, but again, these are sold in bulk, so you might come across a random person with the same cover as you.
Not only can you skin just the PSP and DS, but there are a range of devices such as mobile phones, mp3 players, video game consoles and even laptops. The web site www.decalgirl.com offers skins for specific products and the entire range is listed on their site. Again, there is a small chance that the same skin might be used by someone else, and you will lose out on the entire
There is a chance you can even get a skin for your PC cabinet which will look uber cool. The main drawback here is that you can’t do it yourself and the designs are mostly fixed, but you can see the employees of the shop work on your gadget, good for the people who don’t want to get their hands messy. Alright, enough about the small devices, what about adding that custom feel to your best asset? Stop thinking too much, all we’re talking about is your computer, which most of us geeks would have understood right away.
Where does one start with case modding, well firstly we’d suggest you purchase a fairly priced cabinet that you know you’re going to use to mod, and won’t feel sad even if something were to it in the process. This point is also agreed by Yusuf, who himself found modding tricky when he first started.
Case modding, doesn’t necessarily have to mean that you need to cut a piece of your cabinet, a nice paint job for your cabinet is also considered a mod. Yusuf specializes in glossy paint jobs and side panel cuts for various clients. He has now moved on to modifying cabinets keeping a theme in mind. One of the mods he has done was for the CEO of Vodafone India.
Cutting the cabinet is just the basics of case modding, but how much further can that go. Well, a couple of years ago we had done an extreme monster mod and fit an entire computer into the case of a CRT monitor. Not only that, but at that time we molded out a monster. Check out the link to get a blast from the past.
Some of the really risky things that have been done by people are completely cutting up motherboards so that they can fit into the unique designs created and even create transparent casings for hard drives with LEDs lined on the inside, something we have yet to try.
One of the greatest expressions of product customization – though on the non gizmo side – is in the form of custom t-shirts. You can say a lot to the world at large by just wearing a slogan, picture or sketch. It’s the literal form wearing your attitude. For a long time when it came to zany, smarty or eyebrow raising t-shirt prints the only option was the Tantra retail brand; famous for their collection of one-liners. But why go by someone else’s creation, when you’re more of a wise guy yourself? And certainly, why would you want to wear one of those boring brands that make unwitting promotional signboards out of you. Custom designed T-shirts are a way to express your individuality. With custom T-shirts you can make a statement by wearing a T-shirt that says “di9it inside” or even profess undying love for your favorite band through pictures or lyrics. You even have the option of being as fabulously offensive or fantastically tongue-in-cheek witty as you want.
Next up bluebustees.com has two very disparate and interesting categories for browsing, viz. Parents Approved and Parents NOT Approved. Without going into details the category names should give you a fair idea of what you can expect in each. So go ahead create your own or choose designs that speak to you and express yourself. We’re pretty sure you’ll turn a few heads.
T-Shirt Printing Technology
We were quite curious to know more about the actual technology that enables printing on T-Shirts. What are the different processes? Which one is more suited for a particular cloth or color scheme etc. So, we met Mr. Mukesh Bansal, CEO of Myntra.com for some insights into this field. There are currently four types of printing technologies being used. Screen Printing is a more traditional type of technology. It is used for printing T-shirts in bulk where you have only a fixed number of colors. If there are four colors a screen will be printed for each of the colors. Only the part that is treated gets transferred with a run of each screen. That way there is a limitation of six to eight colors. So, in this type of printing you need bulk for the economies of scale to apply, otherwise one T-shirt will cost you Rs. 5000 which is not very practical. For printing single T-shirts one of the technologies available is sublimation. This can work only work for poly-cotton T-shirts. The design is first printed on paper with a special ink, which doesn’t get absorbed on the paper. Then the paper is heat-pressed on the cloth so the color gets absorbed on the cloth. The finish comes out good but this is limited to white polycottons. At the most very light colors. Then there is something called DTG (Direct to Garment) Printing. This is basically a modified inkjet and can work on any kind of surface. It supports 32 bit color printing. The machine pretty much also looks like an inkjet printer. Lastly there is Print and Cut which is used for intricate designs. In this form the design is first printed on a special media and the outline is cut before being heat pressed onto the fabric. Vendors need to make a choice between these technologies depending on the formulation of design; whether it consists of a photograph, slogan, or vector graphics etc. and the type of fabric and color that was chosen.