The Oddly Fascinating Quest to Design the Perfect Desk Lamp
The Fade Task Light's streamlined design is a beautifully conceived departure from ideas that have defined the desk light's form factor for 80 years.
British engineer George Carwardine designed the first balanced-arm lamp, the 1227 Anglepoise, in the early 1930s. But it's the the Luxo L-1, created by Norwegian designer Jac Jacobsen in 1937, that everyone remembers. Its exposed springs, jointed armature, and bulbous shade have inspired countless imitators, including Pixar's adorable mascot. As iconic as it is, the lamp's mechanical conceit is played out. Seth Murray and Bret Recor, the founders of San Francisco design studio Box Clever, wanted to create something with the versatility of a spring-balanced lamp in a dramatically simpler package. Two years, one spinoff studio, and untold hours of prototyping later, they've released the FADE Task Light—and it's a beauty. WIRED asked them to walk us through their design process. Here's what they showed us.
It Starts and Ends With Light
The light pouring through your window changes dramatically through the day, from cool blue to crisp white to a ruddy glow by sunset. Murray and Recor wanted a lamp that would recreate this range of temperatures. Their light wound up using an LED array to vary intensity between 95 and 450 lumens, and its color temperature between 2700 and 5600 K. “Color matters, especially for designers,” for whom control over lighting temperature is essential, Murray says. The fact that many of the studio’s earliest concept sketches don’t include lamps conveys how central this idea was to its vision.
Minimize Parts, Maximize Impact
The Box Clever team dismantled a traditional spring-balanced lamp and found itself with “50 or 60 components,” says Recor. It wanted something far simpler. The first round of sketches, says Murray, “was all about achieving maximum movement and impact, while minimizing the number of parts." The designers explored how they might use a few simple materials to mimic the nearly perfect balance of mobility and stability that springs and hinges provide. The first sketch review yielded dozens of illustrations. The designers were drawn to a couple in particular---including this one. “This sketch was the first to show this notion of opposing materials,” says Recor, “to create resistance in motion with the fewest number of parts.”
Josh Valcarcel/WIREDFoamcore Is Your Friend
The use of opposing materials is visible in Box Clever’s earliest foamcore prototypes. “Those directions really touched on the motion that we wanted to achieve, and the overall form factor,” says Recor. But the lamp head wasn’t right, and the hinge didn’t provide enough movement. So they iterated. “You’ll see something that’s a snippet of what you want, and start to generate \[more ideas\] around it,” says Murray. More sketches, and more foamcore mockups, followed.
Josh Valcarcel/WIREDYou Can’t Get by on Looks Alone
The second round of sketches led to an improved foamcore hinge and the first steel prototype. Even then, the lamp bore a striking resemblance to its final form. One long ribbon of steel formed the lamp's backbone, and a second strip of steel afforded movement, by sliding along the inner curve of the light's articulated arm. “It definitely communicated how close we were to something that could be taken all the way through to production,” says Recor. Functionally, though, it left a lot to be desired. The hinges stuck. The base didn’t swivel properly. And the interface confused people. “This was really just to prove that it could fit together, it could move and it could articulate, and the range of motion was something we could actually achieve," says Murray.
Josh Valcarcel/WIREDA Good Task Light Hinges on Hinges
The next phase of iteration yielded two prototypes, called 2a and 2b. “We moved through these really quickly” and made several mechanical refinements, mostly to the hinge, Murray says. In 2a, pictured here on the left, the design team moved the sliding ribbon of steel from the inner bend of the arm to the outer, thinking it might improve stability and movement. “We learned quickly that it didn’t,” says Murray. “It also broke up the form and kind of started to make the light look like it was assembled from multiple pieces.” The sliding ribbon moved back to the arm’s inner bend in prototype 2b, the black unit on the right.
Josh Valcarcel/WIREDMagnets Make the Magic Happen
The third iteration phase also led to two prototypes. The designers abandoned trying to make the light sturdier by flipping the hinge. Instead, they transferred the “magnet slide” from the middle segment of the articulating arm to the upper and lower segments. “That allowed us to remove complexity from the arm’s center portion and really make it stable and strong,” says Murray. Indeed, the movement of the arms on these prototypes is nearly as satisfying as that on the production unit. The arm articulates smoothly when you want it to, and stays put when you don’t.
Josh Valcarcel/WIREDPatterns Bring the Light to Life
The third-stage prototypes also saw the team explore the application of a signature pattern to the center segment of the articulating arm. Each of the final patterns, pictured here, corresponds to a color option for the production unit.
Josh Valcarcel/WIREDThe Right Touch
The first prototype used a disk interface. Pressing the base turned the lamp on, and rotating the disk adjusted the brightness. A second press followed by a turn adjusted the temperature. It sounds straightforward, but it confused people, so the team ditched it in favor of an X-Y controller. Tap the silver-colored capacitive sensor to turn on the lamp, then use your finger to move the touchpoint along the X and Y axes to control the temperature and intensity, respectively. People found it intuitive, so the team kept it after tweaking the size and finish of the interface's components. The result is perfectly sized, and a joy to touch.
Josh Valcarcel/WIREDThe Final FADE
"When we approach any project the ideal is nothing---nothing except the function," Murray says. With the FADE Task Light, "every step along the way was trying to achieve that core idea." The final product achieves it handily. The lamp is gorgeous to look at, a pleasure to operate, and a beautifully conceived departure from the form factor the Luxo L-1 established nearly 80 years ago.
Robbie Gonzalez is a senior writer at WIRED, covering humanity’s evolving relationship with science and technology. He was previously the editor of WIRED’s design desk. Prior to joining WIRED he was the senior science editor of Gizmodo. Before that, he was a reporter at io9. Gonzalez holds bachelor’s degrees in ... Read More
