Indie app developers like me don’t have the luxury of a full team comprising project managers, engineers, business development, sales, and design experts. We have to juggle multiple roles and wear many hats!
Today, I put on my marketing and product design hats and crafted a MsgFiler prop to use in my upcoming product videos. This will make a good addition to my expanding collection of video backgrounds, which already includes those for my MixEffect, ZoomCuts, mechanical keyboard, and Apple museum projects.
I printed out the envelopes from the source Adobe Illustrator files. I wrapped each of them around cardboard cutouts from a CostCo shipping box. Next, I taped the envelopes together in the orientation from the MsgFiler 3 logo. Finally, I placed some foam in the hat to hold the envelopes in place.
The colors on the printouts are a little washed out — a reminder that I have to replace the toner in my HP Color Jet Pro M252dw — and the top hat is showing its age. The overall effect is still solid, and I’m happy with the way the prop turned out. Next week, I’ll be getting stickers for MixEffect, MsgFiler, and Wipe My Screen which I’ll be bringing to conferences such as VisionDevCamp, Deep Dish Swift, and Apple’s WWDC.
These are developers conference, not post-apocalyptic cosplay events, but it’s fun to imagine the possibilities of taking the prop outside of my home. It would be cool to take a page from Ironbar Bassey (Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome) and place the MsgFiler prop on a pole strapped to my back.
Finally, here’s what Dall-E came up with the prompt:
“A photo of a post-apocalyptic warrior with a metal pole attached to his back with a mask that has an upside-down top hat with three envelopes coming out of the hole.”
I could totally see this in Wasteland 4 or even in an episode of the upcoming Fallout series from Amazon.
tow.com 
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