Spark
November-December 2025
Duration: 5 weeks
Project Description:
Design and create a prototype of a battery-powered lamp that follows a self-created set of goals. Lighting options for the prototype were an LED bulb or LED strips.
Project Goals
Based on the inspiration boards I created at the beginning of the ideation process, I knew I wanted to create a lamp that blended a sharp and architectural exterior with a warm glow that mimicked the temperature of fire. My vision was that this lamp could be placed in an outdoor patio area and extend the warmth of a nearby fire.
Soldering joints: 30
Feet of LEDs: 5
3D-printed components: 19
INSPIRATION
IDEATION
In the early stages of ideation, I did not have an idea that stood out to me amongst the rest. I took this as an opportunity to let my imagination run free and spew out as many unique designs as I could. I began moving towards a design focused on layers and repetition.
The next series of sketches defined my eventual final design: a monolithic structure with concentric squares extruding from the main body. My biggest influence for this concept was the Mercantile Building located in Great Falls, Montana (an image of the building can be found in the inspiration section above).
MODELS
Early Physical Models:
Early paper models confirmed my belief that evenly spaced rings worked better than differing gaps.
My first 3D printed models allowed me to test proportion and eventually joinery between parts.
Colorway analysis: There was too much going on when I added a colored surface, especially because I planned to make the light itself warmer. White was too bright. Black was too artificial. I settled on a very dark gray that resembles smoke.
LIGHTING
My first attempt at lighting my model exposed the difficulties of soldering at such a small scale. Using adhesive LED strips, I placed them inside the rings (which have indents to hide the strips and allow for diffusers to be placed over them) and then cut and soldered tiny wires to create a circuit.
FINAL MODEL
FINAL DESIGN
This Illustrator render/hand sketch hybrid gave me a good visual of what I had envisioned my lamp to look like early on. I had an idea of how I wanted the light to act via three sets of bright ring lights and some dimmer, ambient lighting emitting from the top and bottom. I also learned from this drawing that I needed to experiment with colorways because the light surfaces didn’t feel right with the bright lights.
Because the LED strips are located on the outside of the main body, I placed small holes (hidden by the rings) to thread the wiring back into the body, where I soldered them to extra wire from the previous ring. After hours of soldering, I had a successful circuit in my lamp.
