Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Phone Skin

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book, so when I got a book-like folding phone, it seemed like the perfect time to replicate the book prop from the movie based on the book based on the TV show based on the radio play...

If you'd like to make your phone the next best thing to remembering your towel, read on! You'll be the froodiest person on a planet where digital watches are still considered pretty neat.

Supplies

• Phone of your choice (I used a Surface Duo)
• Measuring tools
• Vinyl cutting machine (I have a Cricut Maker 3)
• Vinyl (I used shiny foil in black, red, and gold)
• Transfer paper

Step 1: Measure Your Phone

As the old adage goes, measure twice, cut once. If your phone has a weird shape, you may want to throw it on a scanner with a ruler so you can just import an image that way, but otherwise take careful measurements of any relevant features and transfer those to an SVG for the cut file.

If you're lucky, you can just search the internet and find a cut file someone else has already made for your phone. For the original Surface Duo, I found a GitHub repository from LalaTheDog with a set of files for making a skin.

Step 2: Files, Files, Files

Since this is for a personal project, the sky's the limit as far as acquiring images to make your skin. The bigger the fandom, the better chance someone has already figured out the fonts or logos and maybe even made an SVG. If you don't have SVGs available, PNGs with transparency are the next best file format for tracing, but even JPGs will work given enough time and patience.

If you can't find anyone who's already made the text to replicate your favorite book, this is where you get to flex your graphic design skills and DIY. Finding the Hithchhiker's Guide "Don't Panic" in SVG took me a little while, but finding the thumb logo took a lot more scouring the internet. The version I found had a square border, so I went into Inkscape and removed it so I could cut just the parts I wanted. Hindsight being 20/20, I probably should've just left it as is since I ended up drawing a circle around the thing for the final cut anyway.

Step 3: Check It Out

Once you're happy with the source files, you may want to print them out at the size you plan to cut and see how you like them next to each other. I skipped this step, but I had plenty of extra vinyl if I messed anything up. If you only have so much material available, definitely make sure you're happy with the sizing of the elements and test your cut settings on a small corner before you proceed!

Step 4: Cut and Apply

I won't belabor the procedure here since every vinyl cutter has its own idiosyncrasies, but at some point you have to commit and cut the pieces out. The foil vinyl is a lot less forgiving than other types I've cut, but the end result made the fiddly-ness of getting it weeded totally worth it in my mind.

Since it had been some time since I'd cut this foil, I managed to bork the first couple attempts to cut, which is why I started with the smaller elements. By the third go, I was able to get a great cut using 2 passes at "more" pressure in the Cricut software.

I free-handed the base layer of the skin, but used transfer paper for the "Don't Panic" and thumb. There were way too many tiny parts to align for me to want to mess with that task. I think that would be only slightly better than Vogon poetry.

Step 5: Wear and Tear

I finally wrote this up as I'm cutting this for a second time after a little over a year of use. I am a bit of a germaphobe, so after long trips or going to the hospital/doctor I tend to swab my entire phone with alcohol wipes, so over time the edges of the vinyl start to peel and deteriorate, especially for the small parts. I was pleasantly surprised with how well it held up.

The front is only missing the apostrophe in "Don't" and has a small piece of vinyl missing near the hinge. The hitchhiker thumb lasted well until maybe a month ago where it started peeling in earnest, as did the main part of the skin on that side, so it was bare glass there until reapplying the skin.

TL;DR: If you don't obsessively cover your phone in alcohol, the skin should easily last longer than a year before needing reapplication, which should be handy while you're hitchhiking the galaxy.