Eclipse
Product Design, Lighting Design
A wall-mounted light built around its own switch: a black acrylic disc eclipses a ring of LEDs into a soft halo, and only a light touch on the plate reveals it is a switch at all. The light source is never visible, only what it throws.
- Drawing title
- Sheet 04-09
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Background
INDN 212, Product Based Experiments. The brief asked for a working lamp, judged on its relationship to the body, the way its parts related to each other, and the interaction it offered.
What I built
A wall-hanging light in dark maple veneer and black acrylic. A ring of LEDs sits behind a solid black disc, which blocks the ring completely from straight on and throws it as a soft halo onto the wall behind. The source is never visible; only its effect is.
The switch is the same idea again. There is no button: a protruding plate beneath the disc is touch-sensitive across its whole face, so a very light touch anywhere on it turns the light on, and further touches step it through three brightness settings. Nothing on the object announces which part of it is the control, and finding that out is the interaction the light was designed around.
Outcome
The black disc is not decoration, it is the switch, and its only job is to look like it is not one. Finding that out is the whole interaction, and it is why the object still works hanging on a wall switched off: an unlit disc with a halo of shadow is a complete thing to look at.
It is the most resolved object of the second year set, and the one whose finish holds up closest to something that could be sold.
