Colin Tyler Hearon

Industrial Design, 2018

Tone Lab is a musical synthesizer kit that upends the traditional software-based approach to digital music production techniques. Currently, music making software is structured in a very technical manner not conducive to learning. Complicated menus, idiosyncratic functions, and highly technical options are incredibly prohibitive to young, new artists. Tone Lab is restructured to be playful and informative, teaching the basic tools of digital music production by making them into physical building blocks that users can stack up, hearing how the effects interact with one another in real time. The pieces each have graphical elements that teach real industry terms so that users can acquire useful and relevant knowledge.This service allows new users to access the creative world of digital music making, broadening creative diversity in the field.

Colin Tyler Hearon is an Ohio native drawn to design through a childhood spent around a woodshop. He learned how to make things one terrible dovetail joint a time, and eventually, inspired by his high school art teacher, developed an interest in drawing. Inspired to mix these skills into a career, he set his sights on industrial design, leading him to enter the Ohio State University’s Department of Design.