I've seen a lot of similar "patents as art" sites - anything that sets you apart?
Show HN: Retro Patents – Tech patents turned into art
21–30 of 48 posts
Re: Show HN: Retro Patents – Tech patents turned into art
#22I'd love these with one change: drop the text at the bottom! It would be so much more fun to just have the schematic and make my guests have to guess what the patent is for. More of a conversation piece that way.
Completely agreed. The schematics look great, and the text totally throws it off as an art piece.
Thanks for the feedback.
We actually split test this at the very start and the name variant won out. Seems like the majority of customers have a loyalty to the brand/product and preferred having the name.
I guess art is subjective and I can understand why you'd prefer it the other way. Cheers for the comments anyway!
Re: Show HN: Retro Patents – Tech patents turned into art
#23I've seen a lot of similar "patents as art" sites - anything that sets you apart?
AFAIK we're the first to focus on the startup world. As flagged in the intro, we took our inspiration from a print of a motorcycle but wanted to flesh out the idea in the tech and gaming world which we love.
We've also filed patents ourselves so know the space pretty well.
Re: Show HN: Retro Patents – Tech patents turned into art
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Completely agreed. The schematics look great, and the text totally throws it off as an art piece.
Thanks for the feedback. We actually split test this at the very start and the name variant won out. Seems like the majority of customers have a loyalty to the brand/product and preferred having the name. I guess art is subjective and I can understand why you'd prefer it the other way. Cheers for the comments anyway!
So, maybe offer both styles?
Re: Show HN: Retro Patents – Tech patents turned into art
#25Happy Friday! I'm the co-founder of Retro Patents and we're super proud to bring the site to the HN community. Last year, we were travelling in Europe and we came across a boutique print shop that had a Harley Davidson motorcycle patent in the window. We really liked the minimalist look to it and remembered how we'd used early product prototypes for motivation in the past. There's nothing more inspiring than seeing a…
Why not the "classics" like the Edsison light bulb or the Wright flyer patent? I consider the old ones to be beautiful
We're also fans of some of the classic inventions but we have a preference for modern products that still inspire.
They're more relatable and it's cool when the actual patent authors are still alive as it makes the product's growth all the more impressive.
Re: Show HN: Retro Patents – Tech patents turned into art
#26Love the minimalist look.
Suggestion: Perhaps you could add a section for fictional patents from sci-fi universes
- Warp Drive from Star Trek
- Proton pack from Ghostbusters
- Memory erasing device from MiB
- Iron Man's arc reactor
- Batmobile
Re: Show HN: Retro Patents – Tech patents turned into art
#27Love the minimalist look. Suggestion: Perhaps you could add a section for fictional patents from sci-fi universes - Warp Drive from Star Trek - Proton pack from Ghostbusters - Memory erasing device from MiB - Iron Man's arc reactor - Batmobile
Awesome suggestion! Sounds like a fun summer project.
Re: Show HN: Retro Patents – Tech patents turned into art
#28Love the minimalist look. Suggestion: Perhaps you could add a section for fictional patents from sci-fi universes - Warp Drive from Star Trek - Proton pack from Ghostbusters - Memory erasing device from MiB - Iron Man's arc reactor - Batmobile
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Re: Show HN: Retro Patents – Tech patents turned into art
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the feedback. We actually split test this at the very start and the name variant won out. Seems like the majority of customers have a loyalty to the brand/product and preferred having the name. I guess art is subjective and I can understand why you'd prefer it the other way. Cheers for the comments anyway!
So, maybe offer both styles?
Sounds like a reasonable thing to do - and it's just an additional checkbox on the website, so it's easy too!
Re: Show HN: Retro Patents – Tech patents turned into art
#30Happy Friday! I'm the co-founder of Retro Patents and we're super proud to bring the site to the HN community. Last year, we were travelling in Europe and we came across a boutique print shop that had a Harley Davidson motorcycle patent in the window. We really liked the minimalist look to it and remembered how we'd used early product prototypes for motivation in the past. There's nothing more inspiring than seeing a…
Why not the "classics" like the Edsison light bulb or the Wright flyer patent? I consider the old ones to be beautiful
+1, the idea in itself is nice, maybe - ideally - you could make some sort of "public" submission form ending up in a list , and then make into production the most voted/asked for, and - say - send a free print to the person submitting the most voted one weekly or monthly.
BTW, and as a side note, not all Patent images are reproducible free of charge, so the above list might need to have an additional field for it being public domain or otherwise, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_US_patent...
Another thing, I concur with the people that see the large print of the whatever commercial name as being a spoiler of some sort, the original title might be better, as an example the "Gameboy" patent title is(was):
http://www.google.com/patents/US5184830
"Compact hand-held video game system" and the iPhone is "Electronic device": https://www.google.com/patents/USD615083S1 which sound (at least to me) a lot better.
Just as an idea, you could then have the "Gameboy" printed on the back and an extract of the patent text, like the "Field of Invention" or however the summary.
Just for your information, there is something wrong in the iPhone one, is it May 4,2010 or June 5, 2008? (i.e. publishing date vs. filing date) And the patent number is either USD615083 S1 or US D615083 S1, not just S.