Sometimes I volunteer for a non-profit called Keep Music Alive, whose mission is to promote the social, educational, and therapeutic power of playing musical instruments. A large part of how they do this is through their Instrument Petting Zoos which take place in local schools, libraries, parks, and other public facilities. It is a joy to see kids and adults trying out all kinds of fascinating instruments: guitars, castanets, the steel drum, the frog-shaped guiro, and even the otamatone.

One instrument that usually gets people’s heads scratching is the thunder tube, a long drum with a coil attached to its membrane. It’s a really cool instrument that can make thunderous sounds by shaking the drum, and one can make warbling sounds with it when you open and close the top with your hand.

Check out how to use the thunder tube in the video below.

I had told the CEO Vincent James that I would like to be a graphic designer for his organization. He said he had a couple other design interns, but he still gave me two projects: an event poster design for Kids Music Day and an instructional poster design for the thunder tube. I will primarily talk about the thunder tube poster design here, since I find how it works pretty interesting and I teased about it in an earlier blog entry.

Since many kids and adults asked about how the thunder tube works, it was a prime opportunity to design something that teaches people how to use it and even briefly explore a little science behind it.

The basic mission of the poster is to tell people to shake the thunder tube, but how to hold and shake it properly is just as important. I always worry about a kid vigorously shaking the tube and the coil whacks them in the face. So it was important to communicate that the tube should be held away from one’s body. This is how I came up with the main section of the text: Hold tube away from body, spring facing down, then shake, shake, shake! I also figured it was important to add a little caution section in the poster, telling people to be careful of themselves and other people and objects.

Now, I am somebody who loves to figure out how things work, and I know some kids are interested in this, too. I decided to learn how thunder tubes work in a science level. Of course, the explanation should be short, sweet, and not too complex. The website Real World Physics Problems has an article about the thunder tube that explains the science of it in a concise manner, so I used that as my primary source of information. There weren’t very many places online that explained the science of thunder tubes. (There doesn’t seem to even be a Wikipedia article about a thunder tube at the time of writing this.)

There are three components to the thunder tube, the actual tube made of cardboard, a semi-rigid membrane on one end of the tube, and a long, flexible metal spring attached to the membrane. When one holds the tube with the spring hanging down and shakes it, the metal spring will vibrate, generating mechanical energy. This energy is transferred to the membrane, which produces a low-frequency sound through the tube. The more the spring vibrates, the more the sound resonates within the tube, amplifying the magnitude of the sound. In other words, the spring and membrane work together to create a thunder-like sound through the tube when it is shaken.

Now that the text was done, I sketched a few layouts and asked Vincent which layout he liked best for the poster. Given the nature of thunder, my sketches involved angles and a somewhat flashy presentation without it being too overbearing. This was meant to teach kids and parents, after all.

Since I’m out of college, Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions become more expensive. The way things are now, the monthly price is ridiculous. I want to invest in professional software which I only pay for once and can still update, like the Affinity Suite. In the meantime, I am using freeware for basic design needs. I used Inkscape for this project, which I was very new at. (I still kind of am, I need to practice.)

The illustrations aren’t very complex, so this project made for a great start for using Inkscape. I typed in the copy and illustrated the thunder tubes using the shape and pen tools. I’ve been told to “make it pop” (something I hear very often), so the main image consists of bright, vivid, and contrasting colors. Purple and yellow are an excellent combination of colors here because they are complementary and often associated with lightning.

The coils were a little tricky because they would not look very good to me unless they had some boldness or definition, particularly to stand out from the outline of the tube itself and the comic flash behind the main image. I decided to use a stroke to match the background color to make it jump out. The background color was also used for the membrane in the main image, so it all looked like they belonged together.

For the lightning, I tried masking like I would do in Adobe Illustrator. Just having the bold, bright lightning with large gaps felt a little jarring to me. To give the tube design a little more depth and coverage, I put some transparent lightning bolts behind the main bolts.

After finishing the design and discussing it with Vincent, I ordered five laminated copies at Staples. Only one would be brought to the Instrument Petting Zoo—the rest are backups in case the one goes missing. While there are still people who ask about the thunder tube, the questions seem to come less frequently than before.

Overall, I felt glad to have done a project for a local business that I support. If I can get more opportunities like this, I can advance my career much further, designing bigger and better things and get along better with the local community.

If you are interested in Keep Music Alive, its mission, and its events, visit keepmusicalive.org for more information and ways to support it.