Tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? Where are you located?
Hello and Hola! Pixil 3D is a design studio in West Palm Beach, Florida started by myself Noe Ruiz and my brother, Pedro Ruiz. Our parents are from Southern Mexico and migrated to the the United States in search of work during the early 70’s. They actually meet at work while picking tomatoes from the fields of South Florida! We’re first-generation Mexican Americans and we grew up influenced by cartoons, visual effects and videos games. We’re both creative artists with a strong background in graphic design, video production, animation, and web design. We’ve worked on serval video projects as an agency, and self-published a productivity iPad app. We strive to make amazing quality products and we’re passionate about design, technology, the maker culture, and of course 3D Printing!
Pedro and I find ourselves giving back to the 3DP community. We get a real kick out of sharing our designs on Thingiverse for other people with 3D printers to download and print for free. We also like producing video tutorials about 3D printing on our YouTube channel. From an editors stand point, we enjoy photography and putting together sequences. It’s a passion that has carried over every industry we explore. We’re inspired to give back because we like sharing our experiences and helping others. We’ve only been 3D printing since March 2012 but we hope to continue to make fun and interesting products.
What brought you to 3D printing with Shapeways?
How do you promote your work?
We love sharing our work on social channels like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube and vine. We think highlighting our products usefulness along with its aesthetics in creative ways is the best and we just try to have fun with it. We were working for a web design agency right before the explosion of social media in 2008 and embraced it early on. With our background in agency services, we learned to create content, campaigns and ultimately make demand for products. We have experience publishing digital products so naturally we try to leverage those techniques. We curate content for our Facebook page and schedule Tweets using Hootsuite with beautiful images and relevant hashtags. We use each social media channel to broadcast different perspectives of our products, giving it a further reach. By hosting local 3D printing meetups we have opportunity to raise awareness. We don’t have any of our products in brick and mortar shops and have not practiced any traditional advertising. We also enjoy giving back to the diy 3D printing community by sharing designs on Thingiverse. It’s also a great way to expose your brand and products. Overall, we think social media is the one of the best ways to promote our brand and products.
Who are your favorite designers or artists?
We’re really inspired by Nervous System, Bathsheba, Dizingoff, and Joshua Harker. We love their work and products because we believe they are an awesome example of people pushing the technology to its boundaries. We think the Shapeways design community as a whole is awesome and we’re stoked to be a part of it. Each designer here is diverse, creative and passionate. It’s inspiring to browse the products page and discover new designers and products. We’re still new to Shapeways and hope to meet other awesome designers in the community. We’re also inspired by brands like UK Suck, Kid Robot, Threadless, Jinx and ThinkGeek.
For any artists and designer interested in getting into 3D Printing – We highly recommend investing in a desktop home 3D printer. Prototype, prototype and prototype again! Shapeways is awesome for prototyping close-to-final designs and we love the ability to offer our products in different materials to people all over the world! If you’ve looked at other 3DP market places, no one comes close to Shapeways. If anyone is in what we’re working on, please check us out on the social channels! Keep it awesome guys!
Aww thanks Noe! Check out their awesome Shapeways Shop and their website. If you’d like to be the next featured designer, email natalia@shapeways.com
Very useful designs. I admire products designed with BOTH, purpose And character. Your innovation creates the full package: aesthetic beauty, decor enhancement (or blending), unique style, trending forms, and a personal touch. The part of 3D design that is my specific favorite, is each product has a personal touch behind it. In its story of creation, there is a person behind it, putting in great effort, time, and energy, to EACH piece. There’s an intimate aspect there, which places the customer in a ‘special’ spot–like it was made just for us! A non-multi-manufactured or reproduced by machinery structure! That’s my opinion as a consumer. Thank You for your amazing creations and for sharing your story here with us. Excellent. 😉
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