Post 11: What IS the Space Cowboy Lamp

The Space Cowboy Lamp is the marriage of my personal love for sci-fi and space aesthetics and my recent appreciation for the American southwest, named throughout my post as the cowboy or wild west aesthetic. This lamp aims to convey this combination of aesthetics to anyone I have in my apartment, acting as a warm and dynamic mood light. The blue LED in the design will be hooked up to a microcontroller that will make it “breathe”, making it dynamic over time.

Initial designs and sketches of this project can be seen below:

The lamp is in its final design supposed to combine the following two sources most primarily. First, it aims to use some of the same geometry and aesthetics of the Diamondback Scout from the video game Elite: Dangerous.

The ship features very angular geometry, and while much of this design is circular and radially symmetrical, the base of the lamp is made from stark chamfers and “legs” that are designed to look like the front of the ship.

Another element of the lamp that pulls heavily from this design is the overall color scheme. My goal was to combine the bright orange UI elements with the subtle blue accents.

Most of the orange theme comes from the bright Edison bulb that is the centerpiece of this design, the IKEA Molnart Light bulb.

This bulb is accompanied by a thin strip of flexible, blue LEDs that is embedded into the base of the lamp. These two lighting elements, paired with the black filament creates the color elements I was inspired by.

Last, the middle ring of the 3 rings this lamp features is embossed with a hexagonal pattern. Hexagons are a common pattern within Elite: Dangerous and another aesthetic choice that I believe strengthens the sci fi element.

 

The aspects of these designs that emphasize the cowboy and wild west aesthetics are based primarily on the Yeehaw Cowgirl Suite from the Trixie Motel. This room, designed by Dani Dazey and Trixie Motel, features references to classic cartoon and dramatized elements of the wild west, like boots, lassos, mesas, cacti, etc. I decided to reference the overall tone of this design within my lamp. The wooden base of the lamp, made from a laser cut log round, features laser cut designs like the generic Wyoming cowboy logo, as well as a revolver clip art, sourced from this website.

There are more examples of these classic wild west designs in the lamp, namely in the bottom and top rings of the model. On the bottom is embossed text reading “SPACE COWBOY”, using the Playbill font. This font, a slab serif font, is reminiscent of 19th century posters and signs often reintroduced in modern media as “wanted” posters, as described in this article.

An example of this can be seen below,

 

And reflected below in my design of the bottom ring.

Additionally, the top ring of the design features sheriff stars, a common theme that still exists in modern law enforcement. But, in this case, aims to contrast with the revolvers in the bottom, showing a separation between outlaws and sheriffs as often portrayed in spaghetti western films.

All of this comes together in the final design, with the rings and base made with 3D printing, and a laser cut base.

With a final render seen below.