Students

Andrew Gnazzo, Sy Snedecker

Project Description

Andrew and I wanted to design a piece of clothing that was unique and involved technology in some way, and what better technology to include than lights. We have seen lights on clothes before, but nothing that looked clean and higher end. We feel like the future of high-end fashion will include lights, but in very subtle ways. So we designed our own basic shirt with our box logo on it that lights up. Once we finish our shirt, we will donate it to an organization on campus called Fashion Speaks, that will include it in their annual fashion show to raise money for autism. We took a t-shirt as our base layer and added two more layers on the outside of the shirt. These two top layers are very important because one of them is a layer of special white fabric that is used to disperse the lighting on the LED’s. In order to create a more solid lighting that filled up the whole logo and not just brighter spots directly over where the LED bulbs were, we needed something that would be a translucent layer but still disperse the lighting. We tried many different fabrics before we felt like we found one that will work. The other important layer was finding a tightly stitched, black fabric that would block out lighting behind it. This layer is used in the outline of the logo so that there are crisp edges. Finding these specific layers and stitching it together has been a big part of our project so far. We also spent a lot of time learning circuitry and figuring out the best type of light that we should use.

We have ordered a few different types of lights but one was in a single bulb form and didn’t spread out the lighting enough and the other lighting came as a strip and was too spread out. Our stitching on the logo that you will see in the pictures below is still really loose because we may have to adjust it once we get the light board in the pocket behind the logo. In the future, the logo will be fastened securely and will look professional. Now that the physical shirt has been made and the logo cut out using the laser, we plan on finishing up the circuitry and seeing our finished product. We are well past the design and drawing stage. Once fabrication is wrapped up, our project should be complete.

As far as the fabrication photos, we don’t have pictures of us laser cutting the logo or practicing circuitry because we didn’t know we needed to take pictures at that time.

Design Drawings

Fabrication Process