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A Product Designer's Incredible, Functional Camcorder Redesign

Harry Isaac's design and fabrication skills are impressive!

By Rain Noe - May 18, 2023

in Object Culture

"I just have been so bored by almost all the product designs these days," says Brooklyn-based product designer Harry Isaac (they/them), "even from companies that are praised for their good product designs."

"I just want everything to be so much weirder, and more colorful, and bright and experimental and fun. So I'm on a mission to redesign some of the everyday things I use in my life in order to make that happen."

Isaac started with this camcorder, circa 2001.

After disassembling the housing, they fastidiously measured every boss, attachment point and support fin, then recreated the housing in CAD. Then the parts were printed, piece-by-piece, in an FDM 3D printer.

And talk about patience: It took Isaac 25 iterations to get everything to line up perfectly.

They then switched to a resin printer, as they wanted a translucent housing.

For color, they briefly considered green, before deciding on this brilliant orange.

Here's Isaac showing you the finished product, which looks incredible:

I was going to write "Someone get this person a job," but earlier this year Isaac quit the job they already had, in favor of supporting themself through freelance work while getting to spend more time on personal projects (like this camcorder redesign). "When making for others I always feel like I'm looking down, heads down on the task put in front of me," Isaac writes. "When I make for myself, I feel like I'm looking up and out at the world and letting it inspire me to make something."

"The simplest distillation of what actually gets me excited work-wise is that I just love making things. The act of breathing life into an idea is one of the purest joys I know."

You can keep abreast of Isaac's latest on their Instagram.

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Dee An

a year ago

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A bit more focus on the purported advantages of the redesign would nice... judged by this article alone, this camcorder case appears to be just an exercise in creating a pretty box to put the working parts in.
I want to give the designer the benefit of the doubt, so I'll assume there's more to this than I've read here.

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Zach W

a year ago

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*ergonomics has entered the chat

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david copeland

a year ago

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Design as decoration. :(

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