daft punk's red robot suits

If we wrote our own "best of 2007" list of Enlighted projects, our top choice would have to be the lighted suits we built for Daft Punk's Alive 2007 tour. We had a great time working with the band and their amazing production team, and helped to develop their design concept and select the best way to achieve the effects they desired (in a relatively short time frame). Then, Enlighted installed hundreds of feet of EL wire and hundreds of LEDs on the jackets and helmets of their signature robot costumes.

Overall, it was an incredibly fun and exciting project, and even more thrilling to see the way the crowd responded when the lighted costumes were activated as a surprise during the encore.

Now that the tour is over, and we've had a little time to organize our photos, we've posted a description of the suits on this page.

back view of a jacket in our studio

testing at rehearsal

as seen during the encore of the Alive 2007 tour

10 Weirdest Tech Devices of 2007

Someone over at PC Magazine likes us (we think), and has included our lighted clothing on their list of the "10 Weirdest Tech Devices of 2007" on pcmag.com. The silicone lighted nerve bra ranked #7, in case you're curious.

updates galore

I'm in the process of making some significant changes on enlighted.com ... adding new examples from my backlog of completed projects, and rearranging the gallery pages to improve the overall organization (250+ pages now!). I'll be using this blog for extra commentary on the new projects, so don't be alarmed if I start posting here a lot more often.

Lady of the Light

A recent article explains why LEDs are "my life".  

Excerpt: "Janet Hansen didn’t get a Christmas tree, and she doesn’t need one. Her front window boasts rainbow Christmas lights year round and, as you step into her home, past bright geometric paintings popping off walls, through glowing vines and 4-D Escher designs, up the stairs and to the left, you enter Hansen’s studio—the home of Enlighted Designs Inc. and the place where Hansen’s bright ideas become even brighter."

See the full article at sdcitybeat.com

color-changing scarf on instructables

Good news for DIYers - I've joined the instructables online community, and for my first project I've posted directions for making a lighted color-changing fuzzy scarf (similar to the coat posted here and on my site, but with a more manageable number of lights).

Hopefully this will help as a starting point for the many people who ask me "how do you make lighted clothes?" ... while I can't sum up 10 years of experience in a quick tutorial, it should give you a better idea of the general process, and some of the steps that are involved.

Link to instructables.com