Joker Neon Panels for a Dark Room

There are two panels, both hanging in a dark room, and the darkness decides everything. In a black room you see only what glows; the rest simply disappears. So the first decision was which lines had to light up at all.

On the figure, the neon follows the outer contour of the suit plus two accents — the waistcoat and the cuffs. The face, the hair and the folds of the cloth are printed, unlit. That is not a saving. Flexible LED neon has a minimum bend radius of a few centimetres, and fine detail physically will not fit inside it: try to trace fingers or a crease and you get a blob of light rather than a line. So the artwork is simplified before fabrication and the contour redrawn until every run of it can actually be bent.

The second panel inverts the logic. The base is bright, black graphics on a pale field, so the neon works in points: brows, eyes, nose, smile. Five elements on the whole board. Against a light background every extra glowing contour steals contrast from the rest, and the face turns into a smear.

Strictly speaking this is not signage: the panels name nothing and point nowhere. But they are made the same way as a neon sign and last as long, only indoors, where people look at them from two metres away. At that distance we hide the joints and fixings more carefully than we would on a facade.