Laser Cut Luminaries

Tags

cancer, childhood cancer awareness, creative, gold ribbons, graphic design, graphics, lantern, luminaries, luminary, Ohio

I wanted to learn more about designing for laser cutting. So I designed this paper lantern, or luminary that holds an LED candle using my artwork for Friends of Faith Pruden Foundation.

First I developed the 3D shaping I had in mind and constructed hand cut tests to refine the shaping. Then I drew the 3D pattern pieces in Adobe Illustrator as vector line art. Next I added vector artwork I had created for the Friends of Faith Pruden Foundation scholarships and childhood cancer awareness work and began cutting tests of my design in the Fab Lab at CCAD.

At first I thought I would be lining the insides with yellow vellum paper to create glowing silhouettes of Gold Ribbons; the symbol for childhood cancer awareness. But when I tested my design with the warm white battery operated LED candles I had ordered, their yellowish light worked perfectly with plain white vellum paper as the lining, giving off a soft golden glow.

After laser cutting several iterations to refine my design, I ended up creating a movable lid that slides up the handle to get the LED candle in and out, to turn it on and off. I then cut and constructed 8 lanterns from my final design to donate to Friends of Faith Pruden Foundation. And had fun taking pictures of them assembled all together before they left my house.

©2017 Alice Frenz  all rights reserved

Read more about my artwork for Friends of Faith Pruden Foundation in this post.

 

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A New Website for Plate

Tags

food photography, graphics, illustration, New Albany, Ohio, responsive web design, restaurant, website database

desktop screen

After many weeks of work, Plate’s new website is live ~ www.platenewalbany.com

Studies show that 85% or more of all Restaurant website visits in today’s mobile world are via mobile devices. So an important aspect of this design was that it be responsive, giving the visitor a quality experience and impression of Plate on both smart phones, tablets, and full-size screens.

iPhone 4 screen

iPhone 4 screen

I planned and coded the arrangment, size, and placement of elements to accommodate changes in viewport (screen size), always keeping in mind that visitors often have different purposes to their visit when using different sized devices.

2 months ago, I didn’t know my way around a digital SLR camera. Thanks to guidance from Hélène Dujardin’s book Plate to Pixel, I’ve learned to take food photos for Plate’s website and social media promotions, using natural light from the windows in Plate’s Granville Banquet Room with white foam core boards propped up to bounce the light to all sides of the dish. More than half of the photos on the new site are mine, as well as the illustrated graphics.

This is a CMS website, Content Management System, which means it’s designed for ease in making regular updates to content. This is important for many businesses, including restaurants, who have special events to announce, menu changes, etc.

The menus are database driven, which means that changes to a menu item, such as price or ingredients, only need to be made once. The changes will then automatically carry through to every place where that item appears on the site.