The F21 Thread Screen is a massive machine (200,000 parts, weighing over 1 ton) that re-created people's Instagrams via 6,400 mechanical spools of thread.

People would hashtag an Instagram with #f21threadscreen, then watched live via f21threadscreen.com as the spools would rotate through 36 colors to re-create their image out of fabric in real-time. Each person would then receive an auto-cut video of their image going up onto the screen.

Forever 21 was looking to run an awareness campaign that would create a large amount of social and media buzz, with the goal of positioning them at the crossroads of fashion, technology, and art.

From initial concept to build, a year and half passed, but it wasn't pedal to the metal the entire time. We had to find the right time in Forever 21's marketing schedule to launch, and as such, some months had more people working on it than others. The majority of the initial build and assembly occurred over the first 6-7 months, with the rest of the time being a lot of optimization, testing, learning, and fine-tuning.

The entire machine and experience was designed, coded, and manufactured from the circuit board up. Of the 200,000 parts (8 times the number in your car), only the screws and a handful of other small parts were not design and manufactured by the team. That meant creating custom colored fabric, turned and stamped wooden spools, injection molded chassis, stepper motors, PCBs, wire harnesses, facade, idlers, a massive aluminum superstructure, and so much more

Of the hundreds of custom designed parts, each went through varying levels of prototyping. We prototyped various fabrics, with various printing techniques, with various elastics to achieve certain tensions. We built test rigs to see how the fabric would hold up over time. We 3D printed and CNC milled parts before having them injection molded or laser cut. We built full test assemblies. Long story short, there is a single part that didn't go through several