What’s depicted in the first design?

It looks like a deuteron, instead of an aneutronic fuel.

;-D

So, if I understand that last design correctly, the radius of the plasmoid is roughly 1.5 times the diameter of a boron-11 nucleus? 🙂 Still, I think I like it best. I’m not sure if that’s despite its resemblance to the Rutherford-Bohr model of the atom or because of it.

… I still say there’s nothing wrong with being a little bit cryptic…

*…daydreams about the capabilities of an outer system probe powered by an FF unit…*

Glenn Millam wrote: I created the art that Reswan posted at the top of this topic. I would like to clarify my intentions when I came up with it. Here is a breakdown of my concept for the new t-shirt design.

The effort is appreciated, and I admit that I was somewhat puzzled by the art.

Glenn Millam wrote: The problem I had with my earlier designs wsa that they were trying to say too much. The point of the design should be “Will this peak the interest of someone who has never heard of fusion, much less focus fusion, and will it make them go to the site and find out?”

A good starting point.

Glenn Millam wrote: Thus, I abandoned the expositionary approach of showing aneutronic fusion in action with lots of words and other symbols, and instead did a design based on a stylized plasmoid formation meant to be pleasing, energetic and a bit enigmatic. I then put more effort in choosing the typography for both a sense of energy and conservation of space on the substrate (the small area on the front of the t-shirt that Cafe Press can put an image on).

Well, the words seem to be fine but the art, to be honest, didn’t match up to the words.

Glenn Millam wrote: The colors were chosen to symbolize the two components, hydrogen and boron, but more importantly, I chose them to draw people’s attention and get them to consider the question, “What is focus fusion?” The reversal of the type through the ellipses played a key role in choosing the saturation of the colors. The type had to be instantly readable, but the graphic portions need to be enigmatic. I want the viewer to get out their smart phone or go home and google “focus fusion.”

Unfortunately, the impression I garnered instead was of the fusion of two hairy walnuts… damn, that sounds cold. Sorry! 🙂

While I have the disadvantage of having to examine any given image closely and repeatedly to make it out, to piece it together, in turn I’ve developed an appreciation for conciseness and clarity in art.

Glenn Millam wrote: The copy on the back uses the same colors and font as on the front, providing symmetry of design. The typography and message was deliberately simple, meant to create more questions in the mind than are answered. Is it possible we are close to having a clean, cheap, and unlimited power source? Who is working on this? What is this focus fusion thing again?

The words could be fine, it seems to be the fusing hairballs that are distracting…

Glenn Millam wrote: I hope this clarifies the design concept a bit. I would also like to add that I don’t think it is a good idea to get too representational with the t-shirt design. We want to attract people who may not know or care what a neutron is, and get them on board.

Well, my idea with the boron 11 atom was just to inspire some clarity in the line art.

You might well be able to get the idea across with just the plasmoid if you could somehow treat it as a single entity instead of its current bifurcated state.

Perhaps the dark color as the lines of the plasmoid on a field of the lighter background? or the plasmoid lines as the dark color with the light color filling in the plasmoid?

As for the glyphs? The glyphs are an in-joke 🙂 I’ve had a version floating around here for some time now. It’s a spoof of Egyptian hieroglyphs in the form of a royal cartouche… (Pharaoh Lernerhakase the 11th, I think)