Esso: Leave the Office at Work

s s o e

LEAVE THE OFFICE AT WORK.

BY SARAH ALLEN, LOUIS HARBOE, PARKER MALACHOWSKY, LUCAS MCGARTLAND

concept

Esso is a color LED printer that allows users to comfortably incorporate color printing capabilities into every room of the house. Unlike other digital printers, Esso is designed uniquely for the home environment, allowing it to harmonize to the decor of almost any interior space. Current consumer printers are too big, loud, and industrial to be appropriate for most rooms of the house. Additionally, their operational characteristics (warmup time, complicated physical interfaces, etc) and maintenance (paper jams, ink/toner replacements, paper supply, etc) generally make for an unsatisfying user experience. The popularity of the subscription commerce model presents an opportunity to simplify printer maintenance through a deliverable toner service. Elegance combined with functionality is also increasingly desirable, while extraneous functionality is not. Esso does away with obsolete functions like faxing. Similarly, Esso only prints on 8.5� x 11� paper, which is what homeowners almost exclusively use. By focusing on value-added capabilities in user experience over current industry offerings, and doing away with the nonessentials, Esso is able to bring added value to the home printer market.

design The design of Esso was essential to achieving the concept of our product. We wanted to create something beautiful that would fit into any home and in any room. Our product and branding process aimed to be modern, simple, and youthful. The logo, font, and color selections were all based off of this ideal brand. The design of the actual Esso printer was a result of multiple prototypes and ideas about the shape of the printer itself. Before we reached our final Esso design we developed five other printer designs. Each prototype helped us discover aspects of our final design whether that be from a mechanical or aesthetic standpoint.

research In our research we found simplicity in branding through these logos. All of these examples are simple, clean, and straightforward. Most of the typography is san serif which influenced our ending logo and brand identity. All of these logos are mostly typed based with the addition of one random rearranged letter or white bar that completely alters the feeling of the text. In our research we were drawn to simple black and white logos which impacted our final logo ideas. Many of the logos we sought to emulate played upon shapes and the spaces left by shapes.

research

logo refined (1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

We decided to pursue sketches that where not only simple but also ones that convey the message of our product being a printer. Many of these refined sketches embody paper or the idea of something going dark to light such as a paper being plain and then being printed on. We decided to digitize the 2nd and 5th sketches because we believed they most represented our product at a first glance.

sketches

digitized (1)

(2)

type

Run

Aa

Gills Sans

Aa

Aa

Aa

Aa

Caviar Dreams Bold

Aa

logo

Alpaca Scarlett

For the logo of our product we wanted a simple sans serif modern font. We wanted the logo to either be in all capital letters or all lower case. The font of the logo was very important in creating the identity of our product.

Below are the fonts and capitalizations we considered for the final logo.

Biko

esso esso esso esso

Aa

Print

Aa

Nordica Hairline

Aa

Aa

Aa

Nordica

Josefin Sans

Roboto Light

Oriya Sangam Bold

Aa

Aa

Aa

Avenir Black

Bebas Nue

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

Couture

web

Supplementary fonts for our online Esso platform and additional promotional materials.

Aa

Helvetica Bold

Aa

Aa

Aa

Kannada Sangam

Devanagari Sangam

Aa Aa

Aa

Aa

Aa

Aa

Aa

Helvetica

Aa Aa

Aa

Open Sans

Arial

color The color scheme of our brand was important when trying to convey the message of Esso. We decided to go for a cooler toned palatte with the a pop of one warm color. We eliminated the schemes with green and more warm based colors because of the decision to make our brand reflect sleek clean design. We believed that cooler toned colors reflected this end aim of Esso.

graphics &

textures We looked at a variety of products when thinking about the design of our printer. Our initial inspiration came from Nest the redesign of the home thermostat and smoke alarm. We loved how the confusing and unapproachable product was simplified. We then looked at similar projects such as Hue which redesigned the toaster and Bang & Olufsen which made the speaker portable. Jawbone’s textures encouraged us to play with shapes on exteriors. In marketing our product we decided to look at interior design spaces such as Room & Board and Rapt Studio which helped us realize what setting we wanted our printer to end up in.

integration + +

esso

= s s o e

tag-line ideas

Esso: Relax. You're Home.

Esso: Relax: We're Home.

Esso: Home is where Esso is.

Esso: Inspired by the Home.

Esso: Made with the Home in mind.

Esso: Leave the office at work.

Esso: It fits.

Esso: Fill space better.

Esso: A better footprint.

Esso: A smarter footprint.

Esso: It will fit.

Esso: A balance.

Esso: Create balance.

Esso: Create harmony.

Esso: Home made.

Esso: Home grown.

Esso: A printer domesticated.

Esso: Suited for you.

Esso: Suited for the home.

Esso: Appropriate for the dinner table.

Esso: Print in the comfort of your own home.

Esso: Print comfortably.

Esso: Elegantly functional.

Esso: A more inviting home printer.

Esso: Keep your house a home.

Image is everything.

A modern home printer.

final Leave the office at work.

Our selection process for the tag line of Esso involved thinking about the true purpose of our product. As a group we determined that our beautiful redesign of our printer revolutionized the once ugly “work” printer. Our tag line also embodies the idea of the printer being easy to use and essentially effortless and not needing “work”.

s s o e

LEAVE THE OFFICE AT WORK.

user interface An important part of the Esso “experience� was to simplify printing. The current printing user interface is complex and difficult to use making misprinting a common occurence. With the redesign of our user interface we made it completely visual making it easy to navigate and fully understand what you are about to print. We also added filters which aim to conserve ink when it is not needed or color is not valued on a print.

presentation (1)

(3)

(2)

(4)

(5)

Our presentation aimed to hit the 4 major aspects of our coursework in Disruptive Innovation. In elements we discuss trends which led us to create this product. In dynamics we talk about who Esso’s market is. Then we evaluated if the product is real, if it’s worth it, and if Esso can win. Finally we talked about our outside research and reflected on team dynamics and what outside members Esso needs in the future.

research

research These are all images of our mechanical research for our final prototype.

We looked at the mechanics in a variety of printers to help us understand how to condense the mechanics in our own small printer.

sketches

toaster printer

For our initial design we began to explore the idea of a “toaster� printer.

In this stage of designing our prototype we had to do extensive research on the complexity of the inside of the printer in order to design the outside and the shape of the printer. We made several designs and sketches based off of this initial idea. A lot of the internal structure of these first sketches influenced later internals and allowed us to really explore and understand the printer and what its limits and deficiencies are. The issue with the toaster printer model was the height and the problem of the paper folding due to the shape. From here we began to look at the initial problems of the printer helping us complete our end model.

sketches

sketches This prototype was influenced by a shape we looked into for the printer mechanics.

We rearranged the ink toners and rolers to form a circle which created this organic shape that we modeled with cardboard.

organic shape printer

This model ended up being too abstract to be our final design but much of the thought behind the mechanics inside we used in later designs.

rounded printer

The rounded model was another project we prototyped and designed. We abandoned this design because paper wasn’t supported by the model. Though we abandoned this shape, many aspects of this prototype carried on into the final model.

sketches the v printer

Influenced by movement of paper, the v printer model was created. It fit our purpose of adapting to the aesthetics of a home but the mechanics behind the printer made the rollers too big leading us to drop the v printer.

esso printer

Our final design, esso, was a combination of all the successful design and mechanical aspects of our other printer prototypes.

Esso with it’s vertical stature and curved edges embodies everything we set to accomplish in redesigning the printer. This printer is small, portable, and elegent but most importantly, it simply prints better.

s s o e

LEAVE THE OFFICE AT WORK.