Advanced Materials

It was suggested to me at the last group presentation that I could also look into technologically advanced materials such as Mylar, Teflon etc to help make my design more innovative and futuristic. This also got me thinking about packaging and advertising design as well. A lot of high-tech all weather gear now contains a material called Gore-Tex. On the labels, packaging and advertising there is always a diagram similar to the one below explaining the properties of the Gore-Tex fabric. As well as the layers that surround it and make up the garment. Alot of them also have the different layers labelled with fancy names and the word 'special' is used a lot. (Gore-Tex information here.)

This is obviously a technique used to help sell the garment and explain the technology to those who don't quite understand. I could employ this technique when it comes to my packaging and advertising. I could even get the complicated chemical names for fairly plain things like certain plastics and fabrics, then layer them with tin foil and produce a similar diagram to make my hat seem far more high-tech than it actually is and back up it's technological claims.

I also looked at Mylar here. I had heard of it before and thought it was this really high tech material only used in fancy spaceships and aeroplanes but it seems I was wrong. Biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate (Bo PET) is the fancy chemical name for Mylar and it turns out it is used for a whole range of things. Food packaging such as foil coffee bags and yogurt pot tops, electrical insulation, emergency shock victim heat blankets and even NASA spacesuits. So maybe I could use some pieces of Mylar film layers in my hats to make the hat seem even more protective. It could block a certain kind of alien telepathy that no other material can. It is also used in metallic helium balloons, so maybe that is a viable way for me to get my hands on some Mylar quite cheaply.

I also decided to look at the well known material Teflon here. Simply because it is a material with a wide range of properties such as heat resistance, low friction, non-stick, high strength and high flexibility. As well as it being used in a myriad of products from school children's blazers to frying pans and arterial bypass surgery to armour-piercing bullets. It's even used to make of Gore-Tex. So it stands to reason it could make people believe the hat is even more high-tech. Again, like Mylar, it could also block more alien mind rays or have another specialised purpose. Even if it just makes the hat easy to clean or highly durable, it all adds to the effect. Plus it's chemical name is real fancy, Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), which is an added bonus. It's also sold fairly cheaply in plain flat pieces as cooking tray liners to reduce the need for oil, so if I wanted to use it in my hat, it would be easy to get hold of some very cheaply.

So I think it has been fairly useful for me to look at these three advanced materials as they have given me some good ideas for package and advert design as well as what my designs will actually be made from. They have also shown me that I could get hold of  simple forms of Mylar and Teflon a lot more easily than I first thought, so it would not be a hassle at all to incorporate them into my designs.