The Final Lamp

Here are the pictures of my final lamp. The top and bottom bases and the strips are made with bristol paper, and the inner cylinder is made of rolled sketching vellum. The pieces of the lamp are secured with white, mini brads that I bought from Hobby Lobby. I am using a 100W bulb. I have to say that I am very pleased with my final lamp, I just wish that it was more "stable." When I try to pull it up by the cord to hang it it seems to sag down and look kind of droopy. But otherwise I love the light it gives off. It is 18" tall.

Second Lamp Prototypes

After looking over my inspirations another time, I decided to create some models that were more complex than simple. Below are the lamps that I got my inspiration from along with photos of my lamp models.

First Lamp Prototypes

For my first lamp designs I decided to keep it simple construct a clean, sleek-looking lamp. On the inside of the lamp I drew lines in white out pen, so that the lines were only visible when the lamp was turned on. Unfortunately this design lacked the "wow factor" I was trying to go for, and I decided to pitch this design and move on to something more complex. Here are some of the photos of my first lamp designs and the inspiration for my designs.

Paper Lamp Inspirations

I had never constructed a paper lamp before, so I needed some inspiration. Here are some photos of some different designs I liked.

 

 

 

 

 

Project 4: LIGHT - LITE - LANTERN / Materiality / Immeteriality & Design

Our final BDS 101 assignment is to construct a paper lamp/light/lantern using only different types of paper and only physical connections to secure different papers together (so, no glue or tape!). The first step was to figure out how to manipulate a type of paper into achieving the type of light we want our paper lamp to give off. On 25 different pieces of paper, we tried many different techniques to manipulate the paper in different ways like, twisting, crumpling, creasing, cutting, tearing, folding, piercing, slitting, impressing, embossing, weaving, slicing, bending, shredding, and many more. We were encouraged to experiment with many types of paper like, bristol, tracing paper, computer paper, etc. Most of the paper I experimented with was regular sketching paper.

After creating the 25 different papers, we were supposed to pick some of our favorite paper manipulation techniques and start constructing some preliminary lamp models. Here are some of my preliminary sketches:

 

 

Project 3 Reflections

I had heard about “the big letters project” as it was sometimes put from my upper classmen friends who had taken BDS. Honestly,  I was more excited for this project than most people. I just loved the big, graphic element to creating large letters that would serve a purpose on campus. I was even more excited when I found out my group was assigned the word “compress” because I knew there was a lot of potential to put it in a creative, compressed spot on campus. Compress seemed like an easy word to work with. 

Before constructing the larger 3’ models each of my team members constructed 3” models of two of the letters from our word. I constructed “m” and “p.” Both letters seemed easy to construct and were very sturdy. I knew the general idea on how to construct the larger ones, but it proved to be harder than I thought while working in a group. We thought it would be easier and faster to construct the letters with tape instead of glue, but this made the letters very wobbly and fragile. Since the tape would show through if we painted them, I suggested that we cover the letters with paper to make them look neat, unified, and not have the tape show. This was a lot more difficult than I thought. The paper sometimes came up short and did not cover the edges of the letters completely so I had to cover the edges with more paper. This made the paper look like it was just trying to cover something up instead of unifying the whole pieces. Unfortunately the letters did not come out as sturdy and cleanly covered as I wanted, but I think the clever placing of them in the stacks of the Watson Library made up for some of it.

Hand Made Book

Part of the individual project was creating a hand-made book documenting the progress of my group's construction of the 3D letters. I chose to make my book look like hands, and utilize the accordion fold method. I felt like this was perfect for my group's word COMPRESS because it allows the person who is reading my book to engage in the word itself. By opening and closing the book the reader can literally "compress" my book.

Installation of our word

Our group letters were modeled in the font Futura. I felt like this font suited our word, COMPRESS, well because Futura is a thin/narrow font which better conveys the meaning of compression. We also constructed the letters with a 3” depth, so they would not be too thick. This contributes to the meaning as well because the letters can be seen as compressed from all sides when viewed. We were not allowed to manipulate the font, but if we were our group may have considered compressing the letters even more; making them taller, but narrower on the sides. The placement of our letters was one of my favorite parks of the project because I felt like it was the perfect place to convey the meaning of compress. We chose to position the letters in the stacks of the Watson Library between two shelves of books that students would normally walk through. I think the letters were a fun and clever contribution to the stacks because unconsciously someone understands that the stacks are cramped and narrow but not consciously think it. But with the placement of our word that person can actually go into the stacks and consciously realize that the stacks are a small “compressed” space when you read our word.

Work in progress

Here are some photographs of our group working to construct our letters, and a few photographs of the final constructed letters.

The Group Word