Project Overview
We are creating a luxury version of the Nouns glasses for IRL use. ⌐◨-◨
Why?
The simplest reason for why we should do this is that the nouns glasses are iconic — and we need to bring them to life. Sunglasses are also a very common purchase, which means that these sunglasses can be a relatively low cost way for the mainstream audience to part-take in the nouniverse. Glasses can also be worn by individuals in videos, and used as props in other promotional nounish media that is being created.
Current Progress
- Created an initial product sketch and have begun prototyping a design that will work on a human face. This is not as straight-forward is it might seem, since them more “nounish” the glasses are, the less likely they are to fit on a human face.
- Created some early iterations of the nouns logo to be use on the side of the frame.
- The unusual shape coupled with two-tone lenses make it a bit challenging to find a manufacturer that can make these. But we’ve found a manufacturer based out of Dubai who can produce them at a reasonable per-unit cost while maintaining extremely high build quality. Initial estimates indicate that it could be done for as low $60 per unit, and can go up to $150 per unit (depending on certain parameters). We are now iterating with the manufacturer and an eyewear designer to lock something down so that we can prototype a few.
High-Level Plan
- Work with an eyewear designer (through manufacturing company) to design a frame that maintain their nounishness while also being wearable. The designs are for prototyping and manufacturing at scale.
- Design & manufacture the sunglass box/packaging.
- Create & manufacture a few variants/prototypes for real world-testing. Use a prototype for a professional photoshoot showcasing the glasses.
- Determine a storage/distribution facility for packaging and shipping.
- While prototypes are being designed and built, create a community of nouners interested in acquiring a pair, so that we can gauge how much inventory we need to stock.
- Finalize, design and build a crypto-native purchasing process — (e.g. burnable NFTs which are redeemable for physical sunglasses).
Timeline
This Notion page shows the general project timeline:
Budget
- $3k — Sunglass Design Labor costs
- $5k — Prototyping cost
- will need to order 20+ units to have enough variety in colors of frames + lenses. Having a large prototype set reduces our time to get to manufacture at scale because of the extremely long feedback loop between design → IRL prototype. The prototypes that we will receive will match the end product —so this step is necessary to ensure high build quality.
- $4k — Website Design + Implementation
- $2k — Marketing
- to create promotional content like videos, imagery, memes, IRL photoshoot
- to create promotional content like videos, imagery, memes, IRL photoshoot
In total, we are requesting 5 ETH through the small grants fund to help kickstart this project.
Project Ethos
One of the things that drew us to the Nouns was the open, internet-native ethos of the Creative Commons License. Naturally, all of the designs and progress we make will be publicly available under the same license. All code written for the project will also be open sourced and shared on Github.
Discourse only allows one embedded media item for a new user. So a full version of the proposal with all media is here.