STUDIO: Functional and fun design challenges!

 After the whirlwind of frenzied work in the three weeks ahead of the 2nd BigWORshow, I needed to take a few days "off". Off doesn't really mean relaxing, or taking a break per se (I hate to be unproductive), more so that I focus on doing something "for myself".

Announcement: Please see the bottom of this post for an important question. Cheers!

This time, it's the studio:

Now, I did actually attempt to go to Wickes a week ago to finally buy ply for the remaining walls, but to tell a very long and arduous story short, we ended up getting stuck in their car park for 6 hours due to a gear cable that pinged off! Anyway, whilst Wickes are still open due to being essential retailers, their full-sheet ply supply is now all but gone again...

...so, knowing that I couldn't get the materials I need, I decided to sort out my modelmaking tools ready for the next diorama build, and see what additional storage space I needed in the studio that I hadn't accounted for. I realised that I had made no provisions for the proper storage for electronics; cable reels, pliers, wire strippers, components etc. 

Above: The small pegboard for the electric stuff is clearly visible, with dowels for cable reels, pliers, and a shelf for the soldering iron. It's hard to see, but there's a holder for all the pegs (dowel) on the left; above the socket.

Funnily enough Wickes' website showed some excellent step-by-step tutorials on producing pegboard and custom storage, which confirmed for me that the idea of everything being readily accessible is a huge plus. Whilst the original plan did have a pegboard wall here, it was pretty empty aside from the (yet-to-be-built) folding table. The larger rear wall covered in pergboard is mostly for decoration; as I want to use the large rear wall as a backdrop for photography/filming. That said, it can easily be pressed into use for storage; that's why I love the pegboard idea.

Obviously that didn't take long to design, but I knew I had a much tougher design challenge; making a cool wall feature above my desk. Pretty unimportant in the grand scheme of things, yes, but I wanted something unique...

Above: It may not look tough to design (it was, surprisingly!), nor particularly exciting, but I wanted a simple but aesthetic and unique feature to go above my desk to liven up the plywood wall.

...and that's when something my Dad was making inspired me. He'd been creating shapes using short offcuts of PSE softwood, by cutting 45 degree mitres and gluing them together in alternating directions. This gave me the idea of forming my "company" name using a similar process. The challenge was created by having every single letter formed from the same size and shape blocks. After hours (yes, really!) of rotating, flipping, and moving blocks around virtually, I came up with a simple, but fun design that I was happy with. The only slight deviation were that some of the blocks had to have a small bit of the corner chopped off (as these diagonals would obviously be wider than the 28mm blocks that butt up against them).

The end goal was always to have the ability to light it up with a 5m strip of RGB LED strip that I have had for years but never properly installed. After initial trials, I settled with 150mm(l) x 28mm(w) x 18mm(d) blocks; every single one of them having one mitred end of 45 degrees. This gave me 38 blocks; when excluding around 20mm per block for the dowel supports/wiring, it leaves around 5m total length of LED strip needed for the whole sign. Perfect! When lit up, hopefully it'll look something like this:

Above: I think the end result should look pretty good if this render is anything to go by! Nothing too fancy like those expensive colour-changing "Nanoleaf" triangle shapes that seem to be all the rage; but a nice simple sign. Sure, I can colour-change it via remote, but in all likelihood I'll keep it static on a colour. Plus, materials-wise we're looking at probably under £30 (way cheaper than those "Nanoleaf" things!); plus, it'll be a fun project to build!

One final thing:

Whilst I'm here, I would value your opinion on the design of this blog. As someone who has never, and still doesn't own a smartphone (crazy for a "young" person, I know!), I haven't even thought (until now) about how this blog displays on mobile; despite designing myself a website with the core intention to have it functional on mobiles!

The problem is that I've never liked the modern Blogger mobile-friendly designs as they hide the very useful sidebars even on PC, hence why I've kept the "classic" page style for so long. My question(s) to you:

Do you visit this blog via a smartphone/mobile phone? If so, would you prefer I sacrifice the sidebar if it made navigation easier?

(I know the sidebar is merely hidden, and can be opened on the modern Blogger designs, but I feel the mobile design is unsatisfactory as the icons are not clear enough as to what the sidebar content contains.)

I would really value your feedback.

All the best and stay safe,
Jamie