Jerry Harvey Audio make some of the finest in-ear monitors (IEM’s) in the world. Famous performers (from the likes of Miley Cyrus, Post Malone, Ariana Grande, to Slash and The Guns and Roses, and everything in between), audiophiles and music lovers of every caliber have entrusted JH audio to handcraft their bespoke earpieces since 1995.

As one of the Industrial Design Leads, I was involved in both the design and manufacture of these earpieces. I managed a small team of designers that specialized in a specific part of the design / manufacture process for these pieces.

SKETCHES TO FINAL PRODUCTS

CUSTOM RESIN BLOCK DESIGN

From the design side, our team started with ideating and conceptualizing new designs for custom pieces. This would include new rendered colors for shells, new designs for artwork and metal accents, as well as engineering the interior shapes of the pieces to ensure the new driver components would fit. We worked closely with a company that turned our designs/renders into physical resin blocks for manufacture. These custom blanks were made out of anything from poured acrylic and stabilized wood, to carbon fiber woven with copper. Each custom block was made to order as close as we could get to customers specific requests.

MANUFACTURE AND FINISHING PROCESS

Once we were ready for manufacture, I would use Fusion 360 to take the 3D scanned models of customers ear impressions and code CNC machine tool paths to mill the ear shape out of the custom blocks. I was also responsible for laser-etching, polishing, mounting and finishing the custom metal engraved face plates for earpieces. I would work with our art team who was responsible for the 2D sketch artwork. I would then translate those 2D designs into 3D objects with the laser, these designs ranged from simple cutouts, to sculpting entire 3D reliefs. We used a variety of metals for these custom pieces, Aluminum, Copper, Brass, Sterling Silver, Gold Plate, and more.

CUSTOM PACKAGING DESIGN

I was also in charge of updating the companies packaging. I went through a lengthy prototyping phase for these new boxes. The boxes we were using were off-the-shelf options with our custom logo, as basic as it got. My new design incorporated kinetic design, lifting the product up and towards the consumer as they open it, and tucked all the accessories neatly out of view. This box was a smash hit with customers, and to this day is unlike anything the competition is using.