The “Blogification” of Atoms – The Dice Creator Story

With the rise of blogging CMSs the adage became there was no subject to small for a blog. You could stake out a position as a key opinion leader and find followers provided you had expertise in some niche area. A similar thing is starting to happen with product designers who are focusing their energy on niche categories and bringing products into the world that likely wouldn’t exist any other way. A great example of this trend is the Dice Creator blog/shop founded by Abraham Nedderman. As the name says, he make custom dice, often themed to tie into some “nerdy” subculture e.g. table top gaming, comic books, etc. Selling custom dice wouldn’t move Hasbro‘s revenue line enough to cover their coffee budget, but it can provide a nice source of income/recognition to an individual enthusiast.

Beyond the larger trend they signify, Abraham’s products are nicely crafted and offer an insight into the mind of a craftsman who truly cares about the product he is producing. These Steampunk inspired dice are straightforward with the numbers being represented by the number of spokes in the gear:

This table top gaming die borrows from the Warhammer hex system filling the grid in to represent the count. These are small details, but considering how dedicated the average Warhammer fan can be this kind of product would make their day and be an easily justified purchase.

The innovation doesn’t stop at graphic treatments either. This die brings the hardware hacker/steampunk vibe to life with the cool, but functionally irrelevant hex screws at each corner. Certainly not a threat to Mattel’s line of board games, but appealing enough to a sub segment of people who visit independent game shops.

My favorite of Abraham’s projects are his Watchmen themed dice, particularly the one for Dr. Manhattan, the godlike blue scientist. It is cool on a couple levels.

First this notion of “Theme” products has a certain broad resonance, from the theme motorcycles of the American Chopper franchise to the Cakes of the Charm City Bakery, to Disney‘s $17B vacation kingdom in Orlando. People seems to really enjoy seeing narrative concepts they enjoy embodied in physical artifacts.

From a tactical POV it is neat look into the iterative realities of developing products, something that is frequently glossed over when people talk about desktop printing of products.

This die’s concept takes a cue from Dr. Manhattan’s atomic icon, one more electron for each number. The electrons are brass, inlaid into blue plastic. It is a VERY cool looking die.

Unfortunately, brass and plastic have different thermal properties. On a hot day, this can cause problems and make the brass pop out of the plastic, destroying the product, something Abraham discovered the hard way. There are a number of ways to fix this. One is to switch materials, use resin for both the base and the electrons. This creates a neat look, is thermally stable, but is harder to manufacture given the extra processing steps involved.

A second solution would be to increase the size/depth of the brass to help it fit in to the die more securely. However, Abraham had already tried that with another Watchmen die and it set the piece off balance, which is a no-no when you need a perfectly balanced object. He employs a digital scale to ensure this pieces are perfectly balanced and game worthy.

Ultimately, he redesigned the brass components. Instead of being a continuous ring, they have break points which allow the material to flex without popping it out of the die. the design is still elegant/cool and now fully functional.

The Dice Creators next challenge is a set of dice based on the universe of the video game Fallout which combines post apocalyptic road warrior aesthetics with the duck and cover camp of 1950′s civil defense propaganda. I’m subscribing to his blog to see how it all turns out.

On another note, this kind of product development should be the core of product design and entrepreneurship classes. Six years ago I was in a class jointly offered at RISD and MIT where we were tasked with designing a product over the course of the semester. Most of the projects were good academic exercises, but none actually made it into the market, or even to much of a prototype. There is a whole class of people who are developing and launching stuff on a regular basis with quick iterations and no formal structure who are getting the full product life cycle experience. This is far more valuable than another financial model or blue foam model.

Tagged as: Abraham Nedderman, Board game, Design, Dice, Fallout, Game, Games, hardware hacking, Hasbro, Mattel, Steampunk, The Walt Disney Company, Toys and Games, Video game, Watchmen