Duration: 4 months / May 2020 - August 2020
Role: Store Owner & Product Designer
Tools Used: Placiibo iOS App (Beta), Dropbox, Illustrator
The release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons on the Nintendo Switch and the start of the COVID-19 global pandemic could not have been a greater planned series of events in March of 2020.
As my island grew, I knew only the most deserving of villagers could be invited to live alongside me on PhoDacBiet. Molly, Zucker, Maple, Coco, but where is Ketchup? Of course, I ventured on the journey to acquire my long lost friend - but with no luck.
I turned to amiibo cards to search for her, but not only were these sold out everywhere, there was no guarantee to find Ketchup as she is just one of over 400 villagers fighting for the opportunity to a perfect island getaway.
Following unsuccessful attempts to find an amiibo card containing my favorite villager, I conducted research on how to write NFC tags, design and make my own Animal Crossing amiibo inspired coins. I finalized and shared these coin products to give to friends and use for myself!
In May of 2020, iPhones were still in iOS 13, and the technology for writing NFC was still early - I used the beta version of Placiibo (published in the iOS App Store in 2021) to write amiibo bin files onto NTAG215 NFC tags.
Using Adobe Illustrator, I designed the front and back of over 300 "coins" to be printed and punched out to later assemble into the final product with the written NFC tags.
See the uncut PDF designs!
I really enjoyed running my own Etsy shop! I have always been into crafting products for personal use and wanted to experience designing for others to enjoy. I appreciated my experience of running a small business through Etsy
as I was able to work first hand with my customers for these products! With feedback from friends and my first few buyers, I could only perfect the coins and packaging.
I wish I was able to hold the shop for longer as I had received a lot of positive feedback from previous customers! I would like to improve my work with more original recreations of villagers. Like many others, I withdrew my listing to avoid copyright infringement.
Through this experience, I hold inspiration to continue making products either by continuing with jleDesignCo or another original shop. Though much of my inspiration comes from games, I hope to evolve my work with more original designs or recreations.