The NottinghamTrent graduate show has produced some great lighting designs. The Curly Sue Spiral Desk Lamp by Wendy Tytherleigh is a distinctive desk lamp designed for the retail decorative market. The lamp features a collapsible spiral shade which allows the user to control the light level without the need for a dimmer switch (Via designzen).

Another really interesting light design is the Opal by Natalie Wilkins. It’s a portable wireless light (I assume it has a battery) made from bone china that can be placed on a table, held in the hand or suspended on the string provided. The translucent ceramic shell emits a warm glow similar to a candle.

The Hula ceiling light shade by Sarah Turner incorporates MIY/self assembly/mass customization. Sarah says that the shade embraces a new MIY (making it yourself) trend. The consumer arranges and assembles the rings in whatever form they wish so that each person can have a light of their own design.

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New Zealand based designer Rachel Young, has produced a simple polypropylene bowl based on her research into origami, released under her banner of Fold.

After many hours of experimentation with paper, Young has patented the Fold dish, a delightful serving, fruit or display plate made from recycled plastic and available in black, white, red and yellow at Eon Design Centre.

The dish’s intended use is for storing fruit, although it can be used as a special serving dish for cakes, salads, bread or display of decorative objects and flower arrangements. It can also be used simply as a stand alone display object. Each dish is hand folded individually and can be stacked upon other Fold Dishes.

Also in the Fold range is a hand folded lamp using similar principles, there is a waiting list so place your orders now…
For more information, see www.fold.co.nz

While researching this post I also found an Origami Blog with loads of interesting origami based projects from hats to tea bag floats through furniture and window treatments by Dutch designer Hannah Allijn.

A bit sloppy on photoshop though.

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I’ve only recently discovered how much I like lamp/light designs and I have been looking at a lot of them, the fold lamp was one that caught my eye, Alexander Taylor makes reference to the familiar traditional form of the lamp with a bit of a twist. The Fold lamp is part of a series of lights by Established and Sons that also includes a floor lamp and another variation of the table lamp. They are made from a sheet of folded aluminium (hence the name), with a braided fabric cable. We’ve seen a few products made by folding metal lately, like the origami table.

What I find most interesting about this lamp is its bare bones construction. Taylor goes against the normal approach and doesn’t attempt to conceal any of the lamps cabling of fittings. ‘I like work containing honesty with regard to construction process and thought. I think the product should tell its own story and once your thoughts have to be explained then something within the design is not working,’ says Alexander Taylor.

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In order to get free delivery back in January, I rather hurriedly had a variation on Dan’s box lamp cut, and was kicking myself when the pieces arrived for not making full use of the hardboard - I’d overlooked the fact that the box lamp only uses one bit of the hardboard, and should have added something useful as Kyokpaesshowroom (bit of a mouthful I know) did: a wee tangram puzzle. Neat.

It would be great if Ponoko alerted the designer when they are about to waste material. But since we already have a ready-made repository of laser cutting template files in Ponoko, could a program be developed that analyses your .eps file and suggests other designs that could be added to make better use of the material? This could even be done in such a way as to add a little chaos to the process, leading to some interesting mashups of designs in unintended materials, or at unforeseen scales. It seems that Ponoko has provided a great opportunity for improved efficiency of materials in this way. A quick search brings up the imaginatively named Sheet Layout but this seems overly powerful for most people’s needs, and I’m unclear as to whether it could automatically place a cutting path in a given space.
Incidentally, the case of Dan’s box lamp seems to be a good example of ‘remixing’ design data on Ponoko: starting with his floral design;

followed by Kyokpaesshowroom’s dragonfly interpretation;

and then my tea-leaf inspired design (a pattern that I pretty much cut and pasted from another of my projects):

As derivatives of a ShareAlike license, all of them are available for free, on attribution and non-commercial terms. Plus there are more lamp designs using similar principles. VodkaandOrange’s Bonsai lamp, below, makes great use of the laser cutter to create an intricate cut-out pattern in the acrylic. Isn’t light brilliant?

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Freedom of Creation (FOC) are a design and research company who specialize in design for rapid manufacturing.
Although previously featured on the Ponoko Blog I thought it was worth taking another look at their design of lights and textiles.

Based in Helsinki, Finland FOC has been using rapid prototyping technologies since 2000 to produce commercial products from lighting, furniture and textiles.

Laser sintered lighting projects include the Falicon and 1597, the former a pyramid structure named in honour of the first city in Europe to have a pyramid. The latter design based on the Fibonacci sequence, inspired by the coneflower. Using the particular granular material quality of laser sintered materials as a feature of the designs.

FOC also produce a range of textiles which can be customized in colour, pattern, scale, well anything.

Inspiring here is the way that a design firm has positioned themselves as specialists in the use of rapid manufacturing as the final material of production. Moving away from issues of tooling for plastic components, and the traditional limitations of woven fabrics.

Found via 2modern design talk

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Thanks to Ponoko Designer Jimmy again for this week’s Product of the Week. I have to say I really like Jimmy’s taste. This is a spectacular lamp! Designed by Cindy Harnett it’s available as a free .eps in her showroom. Here’s how Cindy describes it:

Carbon is a snap-together construction set of hexagons, pentagons and connectors to build open and closed 3-dimensional surfaces from 1mm thick styrene.
Details of the connectors are highlighted when a Carbon capsule is used as a low-wattage lamp shade (pictured).
Suggestion if using the eps file: there are multiple copies of three different shapes; decide how many hexagons/pentagons/connectors you need and cut and paste them onto a new sheet, keeping edges of adjacent shapes at least 3mm apart.

Congratulations Cindy on a really unique lamp and on being the Ponoko Product of the Week.

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Despite it’s tumultuous political situation, if the blogs Designist Dream and Modern Tribe are anything to go by Israel isn’t short of creativity. I recently found a post on jewelry created from cardboard by Israeli Jewelry Designer Dana Hakim Berkovich. As the picture below shows it’s very unique.

In the same post is another unique creation from Israeli jewelry designer, Yael Friedman, a pewter-metal blend gold Hanukiyah or Chanukah Menorah created with a laser cutter. I think Yael might have some success in inspiring Jewish Ponoko users to have a go at their own DIY Menorah with this.

On another note seeing how Friedman created this using flat materials reminded me of Ponoko Users who’ve created candelabra. It was timely to see as last night my family took part in Earth Hour. Having no lights at all in our home and trying to use nothing but candles really showed us that we could have done with having a candelabra or two around. We are still trying to get all the wax out of the carpet this morning.

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The SHARE festival, based in Torino, is an international gathering for digital art and culture. SHARE exhibits electronic artworks, and awards a prize each year for advancing the state of digital art. This year Bruce Sterling is Curator and Ponoko is very excited to be presenting an exhibit there of creations by our amazing users. Photos below are from Bruce of the whole show but you can see some of the Ponoko facilitated creations early in the Slide Show.

The SHARE festival looks incredibly interesting. The full description of the speakers and conference schedule includes discussions on Robots, Digifab, Networked Objects, Digital Art and Dramatic Manufacturing. Conferences are being broadcasted live over Sharecast via the festival homepage.

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Flat-packed designs are cool because they’re easy to ship and transport, and usually are easy to set up. And one thing we’ve found on Ponoko is that making home lighting is one area that a lot of people are keen to explore. Already in our showroom we have designers who have created various lamps including table lamps and floor lamps. Using Ponoko means that all these lamps are available flat packed.

I was looking at other lighting design sites recently and came across the chandelier below designed by MIO Founder Jaime Salm on Yanko Design. I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out looking. After all, when you think of chandelier, you think all sorts of rounded shapes and often bulkiness. This chandelier is a series of laser-cut powder coated steel leaf-like shades situated around the lighting fixture. The personalized touch to this is that the leaves are bendable so you end up “co-creating” your unique shape for your chandelier.

** Design your own lamp with easy to use lamp design software and make it with Ponoko - Free Download.

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Industrial Design Sandbox

I came across this new blog that just started this month by Moroz. It struck a chord with me because the first several posts are all about principles and ideas that Ponoko was founded on! It looks very promising to deliver a lot of creative insight into the potential, growth and shifts in industrial design and manufacturing as we know it. Written by an industrial designer who also teaches, he starts off with a four-part series on Personal Fabrication where he talks about the future of industrial designers, the advantages, disadvantages and the potential.

Moroz points out a lot of principles and ideas behind Ponoko - mostly about the potential of how the model of manufacturing today will be changed to one where manufacturing is designer/user/consumer driven based on personal individualized designs (either personally made or bought). He very much sees a shift of power to designers and consumers, taken out of manufacturers and marketing hands.

While there may be some possible issues with misuse or abuse of personal fabrication and intellectual property, it seems to me this idea is starting to gain some strides as people are believing the real potential of our technology.

His latest post - part of another series on personal fabrication concepts is the Illuminated Photobox by Sarah Owen, which is made by transforming a digital photo into a topographical relief surface using an FDM machine with a light source behind it to illuminate the photo.

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