Happy Mother’s Day (2008)

May 2008

A different kind of "card". Intended for the motherboard, of course.

artwork

I did the basic lettering in Open Office Draw (an open-source object-oriented drawing program), with "Snap to Grid" enabled to force everything into right angles and 45-degree lines. I didn't plan the letters or the layout beforehand: I just started with a letter-size page and let the geometric constraints lead me.

When the overall design was done, I copied the whole thing into Gimp at 300dpi. I pulled some stock artwork of printed circuit boards to help me create the plastic, the solder-points, and of course the screws. The terminals of each circuit were the biggest pain -- they each had to be placed individually at high magnification.

I'm happy with the lettering and the basic composition, but not with the final visual effects ... the lighter-green of the printed circuit needs to have more of a metallic sheen, and the dark green needs to be darker at the edges.

And really, the whole thing should have an irregular shape, with one edge done as though it were meant to plug into an actual slot. I was thinking of this as a part of a larger circuit board, but now I'm leaning towards making the shape stand alone.