Light Soy

Designing-Products-To-Be-Treasured-Not-Trashed: Light-Soy aims to highlight the big impacts everyday small designs can have on the ecosystem and makes a playful pop-art statement on the absurdity of single-use plastic. The brief was to design a premium glass lamp of exceptional quality, longevity, modularity that ages with dignity. Some of the design and manufacturing challenges included: - Maintaining high quality and aesthetics, while making each component accessible for repair or replacement to minimize waste. -Ensuring the same fish and cap component fits table lamp and pendant light models. -Marrying a hand-blown glass thread with an industrially-made threaded cap.

Light Soy took over two years in design and development, ensuring each aspect of the design reflects its main purpose; longevity, durability, disassembly (for repairability, upgradeability, recyclability). The solution is a premium glass fish-shaped lamp with a red threaded cap that houses both types of hardware packs, the portable or pendant model, and can be disassembled to its components, making it completely repairable and recyclable, and a product to last for generations. Additionally, this means upgrades are possible without replacing other components, with the ability to introduce the internet of things / smart functionality and reclaim materials from previous generation caps.

Light-Soy was designed considering the entire life cycle of the product, with an emphasis on increasing the ‘product lifespan’. Unlike many consumer electronics with a short functional or emotional lifespan, we created Light Soy to be fully disassembled to its main components which means it can be repaired by the user or sent back to Heliograf for an upgrade (product stewardship program), and it can be upgraded or fully recycled once/if it reaches the end of life. Further, by illustrating the unexpected impact of some everyday objects, the design acts as a gentle, positive call for more sustainable consumer behavior.

Using premium materials and the latest LED and battery technology, we ensured it can last for years. With years of experience in glass-production, we have worked closely with glass-manufacturers perfecting the glass-blowing technique, developing the right surface finish, and most importantly fine-tuning the fitment between a hand-blown glass and an industrially-made injection-molded cap. We referenced dozens of versions of the fish-shaped packets to find a design that balances recognition of the form, cuteness with elegance and ensured the design respects the original form of the packets. Other key features include: - No moving parts in the cap for increased durability and longevity - Internal-cap designed for ease of repair and disassembly for recycling. - Light-Soy is available in two forms: a USB-C rechargeable table-lamp or a pendant-light. Both have a built-in 3000K LED with touch-controlled dimming. - Each lamp model is accompanied by a number of accessories; An aluminum base for the portable-model and a bespoke ceiling-canopy kit for the pendant-model. - A completely plastic-free and recyclable packaging which has been designed to suit both models, including a bagasse pulp tray to securely contain the fish. Underneath it sits a number of recycled corrugated card inserts which securely holds the accessories based on the model.