Jaded is a vacuum-formed desk lamp that emulates burning embers as a metaphor for academic burnout and a slow decline of one's personal motivation. It serves as a conversational starter piece where through time and as the lamp is used, its batteries slowly deplete, making the flames burn less brighter with every usage and as time passes by.

Design Brief

The project called to design a lamp that incited conversation and discourse around the topic of academic burnout among students. 'Jaded' is a term typically used to describe someone who is bored and unenthusiastic due to having experienced something too many times that it becomes tedious and uninteresting. In the academic life of a university student, routines may seem like the norm, but with the abundant pressure instilled onto students, they slowly start to lose their drive and spark, turning into mere embers of their once burning selves.

Conceptualization

The concept was derived from blocks of wood thrown into a flame similar to a small campfire. This brought a sense of being organic despite the form being very geometric and block-y.

I thought of burning wood slowly losing its flame as a metaphor for the burning feeling of a self-drive that acted as a motivator for myself entering university. Through all the early tribulations of the program, however, this flame in me grew smaller and smaller with every passing disappointment in my works.

I wanted to emulate this visual into a conversation starter desk lamp in order for people to sit around it similar to a camp fire and have open conversations on the stigmatized feeling of burnout and losing motivation, especially for young Filipinos in a competitive academic environment.

Prototyping 

Three types of wooden blocks were selected to be used. They were then marked, cut, and carved to emulate parts of them burnt off. High Impact Polystyrene (HIPS) plastic sheets were used to vacuum form the wooden molds. The class was oriented by the people from Vaquform on how to use their desktop thermoforming device and the best practices involved in designing objects to be made with such process.

Instead of making a mold and then making a base of the lamp separately like most others in the class, I opted to have the wooden blocks used as molds be made into the lamp's base, carving out the excess parts that were vacuum formed and affixing grooves to hold the formed plastic through a snug fit.

This was to make each block unique and concentrate on the tedious nature of the project from start to finish in order to put an emphasis on the effort and learnings involved in the design of an object which could easily be overlooked and dismissed which causes a demotivation in a student designer.