Apowers' Design School Journey

First off, congrats on your internship! Pertaining to your question about staying fresh, I would revisit what first drove you to I.D. What was the spark that ignited your ambition? Sometimes, switching mediums, styles, or making fine art might help. Maybe you have been so busy with I.D. that you forgot your needed happy time, hobbies, that awesome music playlist from several years ago, friend time or a good old fashion nature hike. Ultimately stay hungry and remember the progress you have made. Cheers. :sunglasses:

Wow apowers, this is a very inspirational thread. Your improvement and commitment is astounding. Keep it up!

Thanks for the advice Jboogie and thank you TSE2!

Currently I’m balancing interning and school and I’m taking one of my favorite sketching classes again to sharpen my skills.

We’re working on pencil sketches first and then will advance to pen and digital, I’m thinking of mixing mediums as soon as possible. Any scribbles or scratches are marks from the critique.

Here’s some week one stuff… The assignment is plugs and sockets. My goal with this week was to explore shapes and forms without stopping and diving into details and fun compositions.

Week 2: Topic is speakers, the goal here was to have some more dynamic compositions and get looser.


Week 3: Lamps/lighting - goal was to get even looser and have a focal point on the page and use some color to pop things out. I still struggle with using color in an effective manner and I’m hoping to improve for next week.

More soon!

Great work. I like to see these types of detail explorations.

You need to work on your hand writing though. Make you lettering guide lines much lighter and your letters heavier. Work on developing an intentional lettering style. When done right it becomes almost textural.

Thanks Michael!

I’ve been really trying to work on it lately, but it’s still hideous I agree. No excuses from me, I’ve been putting it off for too long! I have a lettering assignment I’ll be doing once a day from now on.

Aaron, it isn’t totally hideous :slight_smile: Like anything, it takes practice and thought. Benchmarking is good. Focus on consistently repeatable strokes. Short, straight lines and slight arcs are easier to repeat than loops and curves which is why you see such similarity in the “architect” style of hand lettering.

Here is a quick practice page example I just busted out.

Awesome, thanks Michael! I’ll be sure to get some practice in on this.

Awesome sketches Aaron. I just stumbled upon your thread and love your work. Keep it up!

Thanks Aaron, I really appreciate it!

Last weeks sketches were earbuds and I was trying to have more dynamic compositions and use color better. The color here still felt overpowering to the sketches and the level of detail still wasn’t there.




And here’s this weeks work.

My focus here was on building up more value and blending the color into the products better. I’ve also been doing a handwriting exercise every day so I hope that it gets better soon.

I think these are the best sketches I’ve done so far, I’m pretty excited with how they came out.

Love your ideation. That’s the kind of ideation that sparks conversations and additional ideas from other designers.
Some of the pencil shading is starting to look smudgy.
I remember back in the day we had to do 18" x 24" sheets of just lettering. Why don’t you try doing Michael’s sample multiple times on a 8.5" x 11" sheet. Make sure you pay attention at the letter construction, don’t let your brain do what it thinks it should do.
You may also want to draw a couple of faint lines on your drawings so that your lettering is straight. It will help you to keep your letters the same height and in a straight line.

Nice stuff Aaron. Thanks for working in a few Polk concepts :slight_smile: You captured the diagonal graphical part break up we always use on gaming headsets that ties what we call “the dog leg” pivot into the microphone and creates a recognizable design from a distance.

On product logos, down’t write them, sketch them. Apply the same principals you do to sketching the product.

Thanks FH13 and Michael!

My lettering has actually improved a lot in the past week or two, I just need to keep making a conscious effort to improve it.

These are some sketches from a few weeks ago (before said lettering improvements):







lots of good stuff. You have come a long way Aaron. It is great to see the progress over the the course of the discussion here!

Thanks Michael!

It’s been such a fun year of progress and improvement, thank you for all the help and suggestions over the years!

In the middle of finishing up finals but wanted to share some recent stuff. Will scan in another time, but here’s a photo in the meantime!

A few day sketching project where I explored a dream I’ve had of a major athletic brand entering the world of e-sports and competitive gaming.

Aaron, I mean this is the best possible way because I know you can take the feedback. I think you can do much better.

Overall. I don’t think Under Armour is a brand fit. They are all about physical activity. They are about physical exertion and metaphorical combat over games. If they were to do headphones they would likely do training sport headphones. This would be a better brand fit. Music as motivation to perform and train.

On the designs themselves. All of the concepts feature headbands that completely pierce the ear cans. The construction is not often used because you can’t really get a good seal or adjustment. It is also more difficult to hide the wires in the band. Notice Sol Republic, who most popularly use this style, they had to have a wire go to each can. It is not a popular method because now you have two wires.

All of the can shapes are very geometric. The ear is not geometric. Check out other cans and they are more ear shaped. Even beats, under the graphical headband, is very ear shaped. Check out our Polk Buckle, Striker Pro and Definitive Symphony 1’s, which are consistently rated some of the most comfortable.

Minor point, most ear pads are leather because it naturally creates a seal with the skin which increases bass response and sound isolation. The textile one breath more but most people prefer the performance of the leather. They also wipe clean which is important.

Thanks Michael, it’s been really difficult to get strong feedback from others lately so I’m glad to take the harsh criticism.

Under Armour is very much an athletic brand, focused on athletic movement, and while competitive gaming may not be a direct correlation I wanted to form a statement that questions why athletic brands haven’t made any sort of leap into this enormous new world that is e-sports. The other reason I chose Under Armour is because Kevin Plank has gone on record multiple times stating that he knows tech is the future, and the brand is continuing to push into this new world of athletics, wearables, and tech. So why not look at a new sport that is doing all of that at once?

This is just my thinking, I understand it may be a stretch and they may never do such a thing but since I was 12 playing competitive video games I dreamt of a major athletic company disrupting a landscape of gear that hasn’t changed in quite a while (specifically pc gaming).



As far as design goes I’m very happy to hear your critiques, given that this was done on such a short time-frame I approached this project from a naive technical perspective in hopes of discovering something that maybe hasn’t been done before due to normal constraints.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge on headphone design in general, there’s some really valuable information here that I probably wouldn’t have heard from anyone else! (even my instructor critiquing this project had designed some major headphones and didn’t bring these things up)

Next project will be much better, thanks again for the feedback as always, Michael!