DES 100: Lighting design project 1
The Lighting design project 1 is a design course project that ask student to use cardboard mat and laser cutting to design a light and should be inspired by one's self idea, a general direction from the start of the project is to choose either geometric or Organic.
What i have chose is a geometric direction, after 2 hours of thinking and researching through printerest. I come up with a idea of make a cube that sets on a base, which looks like a cube that grants it's holder magnificant amount of power. A similar plot to the idea is the tersseract from the famous comic series of Avengers, here is a movie photo from the avengers 4 movie.
Retrived from Avengers 4 movie
Lighting design project 1 is a design course project that asks students to use a cardboard mat and laser cutting machine to design a light, and it should be inspired by one's self idea; a general direction from the start of the project is to choose either geometric or Organic.
I have chosen a geometric direction after 2 hours of thinking and researching through Pinterest. I came up with the idea of making a cube that sets on a base, which looks like a cube that grants its holder magnificent power. A similar plot to the concept is the tesseract from the famous comic series of Avengers; here is a movie photo from the Avengers 4 movies.
I have chosen a geometric direction after 2 hours of thinking and researching through Pinterest. I came up with the idea of making a cube that sets on a base, which looks like a cube that grants its holder magnificent power. A similar plot to the concept is the tesseract from the famous comic series of Avengers; here is a movie photo from the Avengers 4 movies.
tesseract photo from: https://www.reddit.com/r/lasercutting/comments/12mogcd/a_tesseract_lets_see_what_chaos_i_can_create_this/
base photo from: https://www.mitre10.co.nz/shop/orbit-lighting-3d-kids-moon-light-dia-150mm-white/p/326502
I started making a paper prototype to see plausible features. Making this paper model of the tesseract took around 3 hours of modeling and thinking. The top left is a draft of what I am crafting, top right is a finished cube and unassembled base. The bottom right is a picture of all the components for the base, and the bottom right is the final photo of the paper version.
I started making my laser-cutting document in Illustrator with a general idea. I must mention the first 4 hours of me using Illustrator is a total disaster. Thanks to my tutor Mia for sharing a few youtube videos and other materials and after watching a few tiktok tutorials, the Illustrator's work becomes more accessible, and here are three screenshots of the Illustrator. The first picture is me creating a tryout version ( 1.5 version) for the tesseract, the second picture is an upgrade on the tryout version ( second version), and the last screenshot is a part of the final illustrator document.
We are only given an A3 paper-size cardboard, so the first prototype only uses less than a quarter of the cardboard; after adding some patterns and setting the right color to the document, the second version has been laser cut and built up. There are two issues at this stage; firstly, the patterns on the tesseract are not in the correct ratio, so some of the designs on the prototype fell off; the other issue is there are three bottles of strong glue, but there are a lot of students that are using it. The first picture is the tesseract, and it is obvious that it wasn't as good looking as it is in Illustrator, but on the bright side, the base really worked out, and the final look on the second version wasn't that bad.
What I changed from the second version is to add patterns on the bottom surface of the tesseract, and I added more details on all designs. Another part of the project is the light. Using the solder machine, I made a simple light using a part of LED strip and two short wires. And with the help of Fablab, who provided a power bank for the light, the light successfully lit up.
This is what the final version of the tesseract looks like. The first photo was taken in fablab and was trying out what it looks like and how can I put the light strip into the tesseract, the second photo shows what the whole light looks like, and the third photo really shows shadows from the pattern.
An introspection after the project: there are two general problems within the project: missing anticipation of measurement and the amount of light source produced from the light strip. I didn't think about the ratio between the tesseract and the base, and the final version came out with the base providing two standpoints and the tesseract providing another one. The gap between the tesseract and the base from the left picture above this text shows the problem. And the light source doesn't generate enough light to maximize the use of the tesseract.
