Reply To: Investment risk

[Glenn Millam]

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 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?”

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).

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.”

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?

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.