Sketches
Because this project started as several seperate parts, combining the elements required some thought, a pen and some paper. Every project should begin in this format, even when they don't its worth taking time to sketch.
At the start of the pandemic we took on 2 rescue rats, Fred & George. Fred was the friendliest fluffy rat ever and George was sweet, but skittish. Within a few months our mischief had grown from 2 to 5, with the introduction of Aries, Atlas (we had a dog called Titan, and moons seemed like a good naming system) and Little Bean. Thus began the saga of the rat kings… is what I want to say but really this project started when I drew the flag logo and began making resin keycaps and coasters.
A few months after we got Fred and George, I began making keycaps for my mechanical keyboard. Quickly I had more than I needed. Then I started making coasters and once again had more than I ever could need. It became clear it would be good to start working on a way to shift the excess but I didn’t want to just open an Etsy (yet). Around the same time I had sketched a simple logo based on a slightly horrifying legend; The Rat King.
The final logo had nothing to do with an actual rat king and was more just an idea.
Because this project started as several seperate parts, combining the elements required some thought, a pen and some paper. Every project should begin in this format, even when they don't its worth taking time to sketch.
This marked the first time in a while that I had looked at e-commerce, having mainly focused on product design for the last few years, I wanted to start by designing the product listing page. Trying to design a e-commerce site from scratch made me quickly realised I needed to do some more research into it to refresh my mind. So I began by looking at various templates from shopify and other website builders, I settled on the layout below.
Accessibility was a key component for me on this page, it needed to be as easy to navigate as possible, show exactly what the user was looking at and make it easy to choose an option. To this end each of the different product types follow the same layout, helping to build and expected consistency through each page.
But by the time I had finished the first draft I'd become frustrated at myself and realised I'd missed a key component of design: Mobile first. Because of this I took my attempts back to the drawing board and restarted.
.jpg)
The resin I use is a two part expo mixture that hardens over 24 hours to be a plastic. Using silicon moulds I can make coaster, keycaps or dice quickly. The resin mixes clear and I then add colour from mica powders or alcohol inks.
This allows me to control the colours in the finished product and create some special effects, such as the smokey green in the image.
Here are some of the best things we've made using resin. Recently we have been expanding past the 3 core products and have started making earings, necklaces and more.
