Our first project in level 1 graphics was designing an artefact to be mocked up using photomontage, as an excuse to learn to use photoshop.
My original plan was a rackmount coffee machine, but I got bogged down in the practicalities, like how to connect it to the water supply in a way that didn't risk flooding thousands of pounds of PA equipment with water. As a result, I designed a connector to do just this. The system used a poppet valve to prevent water flowing when not connected, and was nicely rubbery to keep things sealed.
In the time since, Harting have included liquid terminals into their HANmodular system, meaning I can actually do this for real! Design work is ongoing, but I might leave it a year or so, so it can be my major project in level 3.
But I digress - the actual project involved taking several photos and re-purposing them into parts of coffeeCON. 10 points for each original image guessed! Several weeks of subtle photoshopping later, which I could do much better now, much quicker (even more so in GIMP), left me with these images, which got posterised:
And below, to finish are two vectorised logos, one which Behringer could use if they went into the coffee business, and a nice scalable one for Neutrik (which I did at some point, but I'm not sure if this was it...). These aren't my original designs, just used as practice for Illustrator and Inkscape.
