Design of the Week: 3D Printed Emoji’s

By on May 3rd, 2015 in Design

Tags:

This week’s selection is Doug Vitarelli’s collection of 3D printed emojis. 

Vitarelli runs Idol Hands Design, a small 3D creative firm. Vitarelli explains that he wanted to get into 3D printing and noticed teens using (and perhaps overusing) emojis, those kooky pictograms often appended to messages. He believed it would be interesting to create them in 3D, so you can hold them in your hands as well as reading them. 

He designed several common emojis and now offers a collection of them on Shapeways. They’re organized as charms that can be attached to a charm bracelet, suggesting you could create a kind of message by attaching particular combinations of emojis to the bracelet. 

Perhaps the most interesting member of the collection is the very popular and frequently used “poop” emoji. Vitarelli explained this one was quite difficult to successful 3D model, since the thin “twist” at the top of the poop proved challenging to 3D print. Eventually he got the design nailed and you can now order yourself a poop emoji – even in solid gold as seen here. 

Via Shapeways

By Kerry Stevenson

Kerry Stevenson, aka "General Fabb" has written over 8,000 stories on 3D printing at Fabbaloo since he launched the venture in 2007, with an intention to promote and grow the incredible technology of 3D printing across the world. So far, it seems to be working!