A creative technology project can be a home-cooked meal

Branding a CNY party with the assortment of creative technical skills we acquired from niche CMU coursework

One year ago, I worked with two of my friends (hello Bryce Li) to brand a CNY dinner a friend was hosting. Artifacts we ended up creating were 1) an interactive, personalized hongbao themed web invitation and 2) computationally embroided coasters for the dinner.

The hongbao invitation can be viewed here: https://gongxifacai.netlify.app/

The invitation is linked to the gyroscope in your phone, so the gold details shine like a gold embossing would. As you click on the invitation, an assortment of confetti flies outwards like fireworks. Since the superbowl was the next day, we also threw in a one in ten chance that footballs would fly out.

We borrowed the same visual motifs in the hongbao to the coaster design. We quilted with in two pieces of dark red felt with a contrasting gold thread (for the border and text) and a brighter red for shapes and to add texture.

To embroider, we used the embroidery machines in the IdEATe sewing lab in the basement of Hunt library. We converted svgs to embroidery files using PEmbroider (a library for Processing). It took a lot of R&D iterating between the software and changing up settings on the sewing machine / how we were handling our materials.

This project in its entirety took ~3 days of working between (and maybe a little bit during) classes. But I would say is a cumulation of years of developing both hard and soft (ie. debugging digital-physical tech projects) skills.

This project was one of my favorite that I worked on in all of college. It felt like a good assessment of all the skills I’d learned in school — although applied to a project that was pursued purely for fun, and driven by the excitement that I could make something beautiful for people I love.

It’s also how I would define creative technology. Take the technology around you and make it into an artistic tool. Know what you want to make and hack technology / use technology in an unorthodox way to get there. Want to make a magical invitation that you can keep in your pocket forever that ALSO shoots fireworks and footballs out at you when it opens? Launch a bespoke website. Want to make it glimmer like real embossed paper does? Connect it to a gyroscope.

If it were up to me, I spend the rest of my life making this kind of stuff. But post-grad I’ve come to terms with that it doesn’t even need to be through a career (and perhaps it could be even better that way?). I’ve been thinking a lot about this article: “An app can be a home-cooked meal”, and it’s kind of been my gospel. The real real real reason why this project was one of my favorites, and why I love creative technology, and why I’m so grateful for the skills I’ve learned from CMU in it, is that now I can make really cool stuff for people I love.

So, as it is somewhat up to me, I will be spending the rest of my life making this kind of stuff.