Language used poorly is often a barrier to understanding — for better or worse it can put people off. When you are asking people to support you financially via crowd funding, it can be an even higher barrier. This seems to be what is happening with an Indiegogo campaign 3DPI was pointed to recently. I confess my heart sank as I took a first glance at the campaign entitled “K.T. – 3d Cyborg girl – 3D printed,” with the tagline (verbatim): “I always think: why robots made from lot of metal and bolts ? they look like scrap! Now in 2014,3d printers can print many materials. K.T is the future!”
I’m sure there will be many readers who, like me, instinctively think that if the people behind the campaign can’t be bothered to convey their words professionally, even if the language medium is not their first language, there is a high risk this will translate to the entire business model. Unfortunately, this has too often proved to be the case, but in this particular case I am reserving judgment. This is because first, KT is intriguing and second the imagery of her is just so eye-catching and quite obviously done with a professional eye.
This crowd funding campaign is about a 3D printed figure — nothing particularly original there you might think. Indeed not, but it does strike me as an original design — from Max Chertov a digital designer and sculptor. This K.T. 3D Cyborg girl seems to be many things — the reward for backing this campaign (in a variety or sizes), a 3D printed demo of the quality of EnvisionTEC technology, a suggestion of what is possible with many other designs to come, and a pointer to Max’s vision of the future — 3D printed, carbon fibre, electronically integrated robots.
You may have picked up that I am somewhat conflicted with this one, but you can check out the full campaign to judge for yourself or just take a look at the images, which are, IMHO, lovely.
