(For those that don't know what this is about see the long mac mini thread)

Haven't had much time but knocked this up in my lunch break. Yes I know it's not great but it's a start!

Rough mock up

Any thoughts, suggestions, comments etc?


[ Edited by Ruud on 2009/9/25 18:16 ]

Well, I like the general idea. I briefly checked prices. If one ordered 100 stickers big enough to cover the top of a Mac Mini, the cost per sticker would be roughly 1 USD / less than 1 EUR. Even with additional shipping charges, that is quite affordable

The problem is that the stickers would need to be cut out to fit the exact shape of the Mac Mini (rounded corners). I am not sure how much a custom-made sticker shape might add to the cost.

Not bad, I like it.

But for me, I am thinking of making my own as a "One Off" and use the recolored butterfly in space Hubble picture that was recently shown here.

Put the different desings here and people make their own sticker is the best option i think imho.

Why killing the apple??

I've been using my Mini for almost four years. I want to make the system dual. So I guess I just gotta get myself a butterfly sticker and stick it on the apple.

Anyway the sticker is nice!

@ASiegel
A custom shaped high quality vinyl sticker is what I'm thinking of currently but the cost could be prohibitive.

@Amigadave
Sounds nice

@Kickstart
Having designs people can print and do themselves is a good idea, it'll allow choice because in all likely hood if I go with what I'm thinking, only one design will get made.

@DiskDoctor
The main reason I'm thinking of doing this is because I'm also planning on supplying tested/cleaned used mac minis to new users, and a lot of used minis have yellowed and/or scratched tops. I thought a nice quality morphos sticker would tidy them up a bit.

--

The most important thing of course is the design itself. I'm thinking that the design needs to be a good generic one, something that isn't going to devide opinion. Ok you're never going to get something everyone loves but you don't want a design that some love and some hate. Better a design that is universally thought of as "nice". That's the reason I've used the metallix wallpaper in my poor quality mock up. It probably wouldn't be everyone's number one choice but I can't see it being really disliked.
I'm no artist or graphic designer. So if someone else wants to come up with some designs so we could have a poll to choose one for the sticker, that would be great! If not I'll probably go with the metallix idea (as long as the morphos team guys say it's ok for it to be used).

I like your mock up but I think a round sticker with only the circles and the butterfly should be more easy to do and apply to the cover, cheaper, simpler and faultless...

Ruud: excellent idea, very nice sticker !

Ruud! Nice and really good!
This is a gift for you: it coul be used like a suggestion of whatelse. If I will be able, more to come!

MacMiniStick

@ Ruud

Quote:

I did some more research this morning. It appears that custom shapes do not add much to the production costs if anything.

I think an interesting idea would be to go for a "chrome sticker" with a simple elegant butterfly in the middle. The reflective, grey / metallic surface of chrome stickers should fit quite well to the Mac Mini case design.

@ASiegel

Thanks for doing the research. I'm at work today and I'm ducking in and out of the office trying to look things up and check back here. Not ideal for getting anything done. Luckily I'm effectively my own boss otherwise I'd probably get sacked for skiving!

I had thought of those "chrome" stickers but some I've come across, the design wears off them quite easily. I presume it's possible to get better ones than that?

@Jambalah

Nice design I will print it off and see how it looks on top of a Mac mini.

Thanks Ruud!
Here you are another one: same design, different color.

Stick2

there are tons of "skins" available for mac mini, for example : http://www.vinzdecals.com/macmini.html

i'm thinking about getting a uni-color skin then putting a morphos sticker on top of it.

@SoundSquare

That's very interesting, I should have realised that this sort of thing would already exist.
I've done a quick search but most of the sites seem to be American. Anyone know of an EU based firm offering similar services? I'd look some more myself but I'm supposed to be working...

in France

i suppose you can find something like this in the UK.
I can email them and ask them if they would do some custom skin, an "official" (or several) morphos skin would be nice.


[ Edited by SoundSquare on 2009/9/26 16:08 ]

How about that? Simple and mini-malistic.

You can find .svg of this sticker here.

OK, now the first link should work. Sorry...

[ Edited by koszer on 2009/9/27 0:59 ]

Fisrt link doesn't work at all.

EDIT: looks good now but as it was said, used mac minis might have scrached tops so it would be good to cover whole area. anyway, that would be nice to have some options available.

[ Edited by pampers on 2009/9/27 0:06 ]

Quote:

That would be a great idea, but their skins are a bit pricey. Having it pre-cut to the exact dimensions and curves at the corners would be a nice advantage to having to cut it ourselves, but if the difference in the cost is going to be $1.50 for one I have to cut out and $25.00 for one that is pre-cut, I think I'll do the cutting myself.

I like it!!!

@koszer

The rapidshare-link for the svg-file doesn't work-

@Kronos

Seems like it has reached the "download 10 times" limit pretty fast. here we go again... Expect a more subtle butterfly version soon.

That simple grey butterfly would be cool too.. or how about only the inner circle and the butterfly from the first pic? Just to cover the apple... or would the edge be ugly or not lasting too good.

It seems someone already thought about it : blue butterfly skin

Lots of nice ideas/designs appearing in this thread.
I think I will plow ahead with a decent sticker as a low cost solution. The skins are nice but more expensive than I would like.

Haven't had time to try out Jambalah designs actually on a mini (sorry about that Jambalah). I've been too busy taking Mac minis apart and running hardware tests, re-installing OS X etc.

Slightly off topic:
Opened up a 1.25ghz model to find a spider had been living inside it! Quite a lot of cobwebs inside and the dead body of the spider itself. The machine runs well though. Another mini I bought non-functional, I've managed to get running. Airport card seems to have been the main problem and the combi drive is buggered. When I got it booted up the first time I had the very nice surprise to discover it's a 1.5ghz, 64mb VRAM model rather than the 1.42ghz model that it was advertised as.
I paid ?56 plus shipping for it, what a bargain!

try this :

http://www.skinmania.com/Skinmania/en-GB

it doesn't seem too expensive.

(mac mini is into the game console category)


edit : i made one with the metallix wallpaper just for a test using this website, i'll tell you if it prints well, i'll post pictures.



[ Edited by SoundSquare on 2009/9/28 13:36 ]

[ Edited by SoundSquare on 2009/9/28 13:49 ]