Initial Idea and predesigning
I initially had no Idea what to put for my decal, as none of the ideas I came up with would work for the places I wanted them to go. The, I went downstairs and saw a flat face on my Xbox and figured I could put something there, so I began the design I wanted. After measuring out the area I wanted to be about 6 inches, I found an image right for the size. the process is shown below.
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creating the decal in Illustrator
It was quite similar to the creation of the keychain in Illustrator. I found an Image I liked, imported it into illustrator, and had to make it a 3-color logo. After that it was essentially done, all I needed to do was ungroup the pieces to separate them for printing and remove any excess pieces left by the separation, then I was ready for printing.
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Cutting out and applying the decal
The hardest part of this project was learning how to get the individual pieces cut out and into the vinyl cutter. I didn't know how to work the cutter or the site corresponding with it, shown on the top left, so I was trying random things and accidentally set off an alarm... fortunately I figured it out and was printing the pieces off one by one until I had the pieces shown in the bottom left image.
After that was the easy part, that being putting the pieces on one by one until I had the full product. Smoothing out the pieces with a squeegee to safely get them onto the tape, then putting them each onto each other in the order I wanted. Soon enough I had all of the pieces done, making the final product designed. Th last step was to apply it directly to the Xbox in the place I wanted it. |
Final product
Summary
To close it off, the final product was to my liking and I believe it went very well. Through the project I also learned a little more about illustrator, how to print things out using the vinyl cutter and website, and lastly how to set up all of the layers to make the decal look how it's supposed to. Once again, I wish I was more careful when putting on the pieces because I did end up with bubbles and the pieces being just slightly off center. Overall this project was a lot of fun and I believe it was a good experience.