

Uncommon - Custom design your own iPhone case - mattking
http://www.getuncommon.com/
You can create your own or pick from hundreds of artist designs.
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cscotta
Matt King (op), myself, and the rest of our team at Instrument have been
building out the site and backend infrastructure for this manufacturing
process for the past five months.

It's been one heck of a ride...we're web guys and don't exactly have a lot of
experience in building factories or making, um, real physical objects.

The frontend is powered by Interface (<http://www.getinterface.com>), with the
backend order fulfillment / manufacturing infrastructure built in Rails
running on top of Ruby 1.9 and Unicorn, all sitting behind Nginx. All asset
processing on the backend is done using GraphicsMagick using a modded
mini_magick, which is way faster and more efficient than ImageMagick.

We'd love to hear your feedback, thoughts, and criticisms!

~~~
endtwist
I'd be interested in hearing more about how you went from idea to production,
finding a manufacturer, etc. I think this is a big stumbling point for a lot
of people in the same position as you were — interested in manufacturing a
physical product, but only familiar with the web.

~~~
saturdayplace
Seconded. A few years back for a school project I had designed and digitally
modeled a chess set in 3D. After showing the renders to people, some folks
claimed they'd buy an actual physical version. I pursued it for a bit, but all
the places I emailed required orders too large for me to afford, or made the
one-off prohibitively expensive on a per-set basis. It would be interesting to
hear more about how you folks pursued this.

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dhyasama
Is there a way to gift these? I'd buy two right now if so. Also, when is the
touch version going to be available?

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gurgeous
I just ordered one. This is a great idea! I really like the flash tool that
helps you place custom artwork on the case. The checkout process was very
smooth as well.

That being said, there's a problem with the custom artwork process. The vast
majority of my photos are landscape, and these simply don't fit well onto a
case. I had to photoshop one of my photos to add some extra sky onto the top
in order to graft it onto a case. Any landscape photo taken with the rule of
thirds will have this problem.

This is compounded by the tool, which has a nasty looking warning if you fail
to fill the entire print area with your photo. There's nothing in the FAQ
about the "print area", and none of the photos show the front of the case,
leaving me completely in the dark about how serious an issue this is.

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mattking
Obviously being an iPhone you expect to view it in a vertical orientation,
however we do provide a way to rotate the image to landscape.

We're working on updating the FAQ about the bleed area. Basically since you're
looking at the back of the case, it's hard to visualize the fact that the case
wraps around the sides of the phone and has a slight lip around the front. The
image printing process does cover that entire area. We wanted to make people
aware that the image does in fact need to cover more area than is visible in
the configurator. You do have the option to not cover the bleed, it will just
end up being the white base color of the case.

Thanks for the feedback, it's much appreciated!

~~~
gurgeous
I understand. A couple of suggestions:

1) Document this better! I figured it out eventually, but there were a couple
of people looking over my shoulder who wanted to "just click continue", which
would have resulted in an ugly surprise later on.

2) You could auto-expand my image to cover the bleed. Basically, just take the
last few pixels on each side and expand them out to the edges. That would
almost always be better than plain old white, right? This is basically what I
did manually with Photoshop.

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czstrong
This is awesome. Price is right too, in my opinion.

The biggest value to me is to be able to upload and use my own photo; I don't
care too much for the existing art, not that there is anything wrong with your
selection.

Uploading the photo was easy and resizing and centering is easy and intuitive.

Couple things, though: When I submit my uploaded pic for approval, it just
spins indefinitely.

Also, when I was centering my custom picture on the phone, the picture filled
the entire area of the phone, but not the entire "print area." I don't really
get this. If the pic covers the whole case, how does this not cover the whole
print area? It wasn't originally clear to me that the blue dotted square is
the entire print area.

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Nycto
Dang... I wish I had seen this two weeks ago. I would love to have purchased
something as a Christmas gift for my wife. It's cutting it a bit too close at
this point, though.

~~~
cscotta
If you place an order today, it'll be printed and shipped today. Ground
shipping should be okay depending on your location (they will be shipped from
Louisville, KY), but 3-Day might not be a bad idea.

Feel free to drop me an e-mail if you have any questions:
scott@weareinstrument.com

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wmeredith
WOW! Nice biz model and killer implementation. I wish you guys luck, but it
looks like you may not need it. I'll be ordering a couple of these.

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amohr
Looks great! The custom designer works well and the available artwork is
fantastic.

One thing: maybe this is just me, but the account verification email got
caught in my spam filter. If I had to guess, I would say it's because the
title was "hello" - kinda spammy sounding.

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xelfer
I love the idea, well done guys!

A friend mentioned he's unable to upload artwork from Safari 4 on a mac, if
you'd like to double check that. (it worked in firefox on the mac).

Also, $60USD shipping to Australia for a $40USD product? is that correct?

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audionerd
I usually _hate_ Flash intros, but this one was just right. Quick intro, and
the animation leads the eye nicely to the products. The shifted perspective on
that spinning product animation gives it a bit more impact. Really well done.

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pxlpshr
I just went through the ordering process and from a designers standpoint, this
is a really solid execution. I'll probably order a case soon but I need to
spend some time designing something worthwhile. Bookmarked! Great job fellas.

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arithmetic
Really slick. And that's saying a lot since I typically dislike iPhone cases
(they look clunky and makes the iPhone look big and ugly) - I love the designs
you have on the site. Good job folks!

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phreanix
I don't know if it's just me, but this page isn't loading:

<http://www.getuncommon.com/customize/product/13/>

~~~
cscotta
Hey Phreanix,

Do you have Javascript disabled, by chance? JS and Flash are required to
display the product configurator.

I did some looking around, and I can't find another way that you might have
arrived at this link (unless perhaps the JS did not initialize correctly).

If you still have trouble after ensuring that JS and Flash are both available,
drop me an e-mail at scott@weareinstrument.com and we'll look into it right
away.

Thanks!

\- Scott

~~~
samdk
It would be nice if this degraded more gracefully. There are going to be
people that arrive at that link without hitting the JS for whatever reason.
Arriving at a blank white page is going to confuse them.

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czstrong
I think it would be great to deign your own case and be able to share it from
your "saved designs" list in your account. For instance, I made a cool case
with a picture of mine and I would like to post it to facebook or sent it in
an email to share with my friends. This would let them see my cool case and be
good marketing for you.

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abinoda
heard of <http://stickstickbangbang.com>?

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xsmasher
That's just some sort of sticker, right? Not a case?

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dkokelley
Can you elaborate on the manufacturing process? Do you outsource the files to
a printer? I would think it's just getting a blank case made (not too hard to
find someone to make an unbranded one, right?) and then sending it to a
printer for fulfillment.

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vegashacker
Seems really cool. I clicked around though, looking for the price, and
couldn't find it.

~~~
vegashacker
$39.95 to make your own. Not bad.

