We were inspired by a Tumblr post by Fred Wilson, showcasing a 3-D printed waveform of the Tōhoku earthquake in Japan,” says Brad Dickason, the Vibe’s director of product. “Immediately, a bunch of sound-based products popped into our heads and we started hacking.”
Shapeways builds the case by taking Soundcloud’s waveform and sampling it at six different frequencies. The resulting averages are overlaid to create the design for the case, which is printed using their “strong and flexible” nylon-based plastic. “It’s quite suitable for iPhone cases, which are very thin and need to protect against a fall, but also must be stretched around the phone to fit,” says Mary Huang, designer of The Vibe.
They experimented with simply printing the waveform, and with turning it into jewelry, before settling on the iPhone case. Dickason says they’ve seen everything from dubstep songs to kids printing “I love you” as gifts for their mothers. Here’s a recording of children laughing, that you can use as a case if you’re into that sort of thing.
One of the biggest challenges the designers faced was getting the case to reliably fit the phone. “Thedifference between a case fitting snugly and falling off comes down to fractions of millimeters,” she says. After a lot of prototyping, they found a model that would easily snap to the four corners.
What I love about The Vibe is how it changes how you think about music. As it turns out, many songs are pretty boring when translated into The Vibe. You start digging through the archive, looking for songs with a wide dynamic range in the hopes that they’ll give you a pleasing waveform. (I can’t comment on the song quality but this Sound of Silence dubstep remix makes for a great case.)
The Vibe is part of Shapeways’ push to make customized design cheaper and more accessible. “Whether you call it bespoke mass production, personalized production, or mass customization, we’re working to enable everyone to create the objects in their lives,” says Shapeways’ Carine Carmy. “We’re working to make 3-D printing — and personalized production — accessible to everyone.”
To use it, head over to the Vibe’s web interface, link it up with a Soundcloud account, pick a song (or sound) and position the slider to catch the snippet you’d like to use. Click ‘buy’ and Shapeways does the rest.