LED BASE

During the research process, I discovered numerous designs with music playlist which caught my eyes and I felt like I wanted to recreate the album cover using my own photos in order to create my project in a unique way. Instead of using the same album cover that the song actually used, you can decide to choose my image which makes good contrast with the music that you chose. It’s a LED light with an acrylic board and my designs are engraved in the board so when you put an acrylic on the LED base, which will look like picture above. A target audience would be anyone who interests in designing their own designs and people who want to learn more about creating graphic projects using Adobe Illustrator. Even you are not familiar with using tools in Adobe Illustrator, you can learn during this project and if you’re a person who likes music then you can create your own album cover that matches with a title, especially if you like creating or are interested in designing your own projects.

I decided to do research to find materials and tools that I can use during this project which was helpful and guided me through each step. I discovered a lot of videos that explain how to convert a file to upload on glowforge and use correct color codes to print them in a way that you want to like cutting or engraving. Additionally, the sites and videos were giving the guidelines of where to start, a summary of what to do, and what to fix in order to not make any errors. You need a clear acrylic board, LED base, and ruler so that you can measure the correct measurements of length and height for the LED base. Also you need a sketchbook and pencil to draw your sketch.

After you selected the title of song and the photo that you want, you have to draw your base board in the middle of sketchbook then write the tile of songs, a singer, and make it look like music playlist. In the top of base board, you need to draw a big square and start to trace out the image that you chose.

After you completed the sketch, you need to scan your design using your phone, then you have to upload the file on Adobe Illustrator. You need to measure the length and height of the LED base so that you can use the correct sizes for the bottom part of the acrylic so when you printed, it can fit perfectly on the base. Using a pen tool, you need to create a square board like picture above by using correct measurements. Change the outstroke color to red in order to follow the right color codes to print them without making errors.

Create another small square in the board using black outstroke that you can engrave the design and using your sketch that you uploaded, you can start to trace the image using pen tools. Make sure you connect lines in order to create shapes and you can use shape builder tools to combine the shapes.

In order for the Glowforge to understand your editable texts, you must convert the text to outlines. This is simply done by selecting your text then clicking on type then clicking on create outlines on Adobe Illustrator.Then go to "object" and click "path" and choose "outline stroke" in order to print any text properly.

You can start adding more details details to make it look more realistic. After you made the whole board with the design, you can finalize them by outlining any texts and checking for overlapping parts. This is because if there is any overlapping parts, which can cause errors or problems with messy engraving, so you need to fix those area by selecting the area with selection tools and clicking unite to combine shapes. You can simply find unite tool in the pathfinder that's on the right side bottom corner in Adobe Illustrator.

Under your design, you can create text box and type your title of song, a singer, and the time records to make it look like music playlist. Don't forget to outline the texts, color code in the right way, and the measurements. Before you save your files into ai and svg, zoom in each area that you can check for your overlapping parts. If you feel you're ready to print your design, go to file and click save as and save two different files into ai and svg.

Go to "app.glowforge.com" and sign in with your account, then click "create a new design". You will see "upload a file" and you can click the tap then upload your svg file in there. When you upload your file, you will see your design appears on the screen then go select your materials and check if your design is color coded in the right format. Then you can go check for the measurements and if you want to then you can also rescale in the Glowforge to fit into your material. Then click print ready button on the top right to check for the print time. When the machine is ready to print then you can click print button to print your design!

One I liked most during this project was that I was able to use all my knowledge, had freedom and opportunities to choose and explore by myself. It’s been a year since I learned how to use Adobe Illustrator and I felt like I am familiar with most of the tools which can contribute to my final project in order to improve my skills and create in a better way. Once I printed my project, there was few parts which did not print properly so I had to go over all my designs to figure out if there is any overlapping area. And I discovered, there were some parts that was overlapping which I went through them using unity tool in order to fix my files that I can reprint. This is what I want to improve and change since I have learned during this project. I would like to add different images or little symbols in the camera films in order to create them differently next time. This is because I thought that glowforge cannot really print those small details but as soon as I saw my final products when it was printed, it was detail enough to see everything clearly which makes me think that I would like to add more details next time.