I’m designing a product display for the perfume mogul Thierry Mugler. The image of the company is typified by this photo on the left. The glowing icy city with the hot sophisticated girl on top of the cold cold skyscraper.

The perfume is called Angel, and its promotional materials make use of a universe metaphor – the product universe with bottles of perfume in the shape of stars of various sizes.

After suggesting various high-tech displays that react to the approach of a potential customer, we settled on a simple display with a spinning light underneath shards of a shattered mirror. Above this stands the magnanimous bottle of parfum. This is all enclosed within a plexi box with big magnifying glasses on all sides.

So far, my designs revolve around the use of a servo to rotate back and forth underneath mirrored plexi shards. The intent is to light up the edges of the plexi as a light rotates underneath it. The servo and lights are controlled by a PIC chip which takes turns pulsing the servo and four individual groups of lights. This simulates continuous lighting and moving of the servo adequately well. The lights fade in and out a semi-random fashion while moving to keep the display interesting.

My technique is to use superbright LEDs that fit into holes drilled in the arms of a cross attached to the servo. There are 3 LEDs per arm of the cross, so 12 LEDs.

In trying out different designs for the mirror shards, I’ve found that using clear plexi as a base underneath them does not hide the servo/light mechanism adequately. The lights can be seen directly from the top, no matter how well I try to conceal them.

A great technique I’ve worked out is to glue the mirrored pllexi shards to a clear plexi base (using Weld-on #16 – very nice!). I wait for this to dry, then turn the whole thing upside-down. This allows me to see exactly where the bottom edges of the mirrored plexi are touching the clear plexi base. Using strips of masking tape, I cover the bottom of the clear plexi wherever I see the mirrored plexi touching it on the other side. Then I spray-paint the bottom side so that everything is opaque except where the masking tape is. I rip of the masking tape, and there I have nice transparent areas underneath the edge of the mirrored shards.

One note is that I’m using 1/4″ clear plexi, which is a little thick for this technique. From a side angle, you can see the 1/4″ gap between the opening in the sray paint on the bottom-side of the clear plexi base and the bottom edge of the mirrored plexi. 1/8″ would probably work better. Either way, it’s a great solution.