IKEA Fällbar Foldable Light
At the start of second year. We were approached by leading furniture and homeware brand IKEA to design a light that could fall into the price range of £20-£30. The brief also stated the light should use pre-exsiting electrical components from their popular 'Kajuta" light. The main form of the light should reflect the IKEA design language as well as being made from recyclable materials and low cost manufacturing techniques to lower it's carbon footprint.
Skills used in the Project
Existing Product Research, Material Testing & Research, Sketching, Final Concept Modelling, Packaging Design, Use of Creative Suite to create instruction manual (Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator).
To gain insight into the design language of IKEA and there core values, a store visit was conducted. During this time, the type of light and the direction of the design was decided that of a bedrom during this visit. The overall dimension of nearly every bedroom light sold by IKEA was of a compact form as not to interfere with the other functions of a bedside table.
The development of the compact idea was also tied in with the thought of the product being compact and folding for easy storage. A bye-product of this design direction would make the logistical cost of shipping the lights from factory to the store considerably marginal. The sketching process also allowed forms to be explored within the folding idea with the final decision being made to take on the acordion style form.
To meet the requirements set out by clients in the brief. A full scale working model had to be made with corresponding packaging and IKEA set style instructions. The packaging of the product involved a cardboard sleeve which compressed the light into it's folded form with a label adhered to front. This was to ensure maximum sustainablity and minimise overall waste mainly associated with packaging.
As aforementioned. A set of instructions had to be produced to make assembly of the light easy to understand. The IKEA design language of the instructions was created simply by using photos taken of every process and then line drawn in Adobe Illustrator.
As per the instruction. The same design language was used when creating the label in Adobe Illustrator. The name Fällbar is a Swedish derivative of collapsing/folding which comes into line with IKEA's naming strategy, describing the products function.
Summary of Key Skills Used in This Project:
Analysis of existing market and company products, Ideation of designs that reflect company ethos and design language through sketching, Model making, Design for manufacture and user assembly, Packaging Design using Adobe Suite, Assembly instruction design using Adobe Suite
