The LED alternative

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Jakarta- Singapore, 15^th July 2014

I am in transit in my Singapore office for half a day before leaving for Hong Kong and Shenzhen tomorrow. The usual project and admin issues to follow up on. We are working on a commercial project in the Philippines in which we have suggested a lighting concept reminiscent of the good old neon tubes. A case of signage patterns becoming a lighting feature. For that however we have been asked if that can be done in LED (hey, what’s new 🙂 ) so we have been looking around a bit, searching the net, checking out suppliers, and to no-one’s surprise there seems to already be quite an extensive market of LED- NEON retrofit. While it is not my everyday application it did not came as a big surprise. Who or what application does not have an LED alternative? The LED Alternative…it sounds a bit like a Robert Ludlum thriller and as I think of it, it could be the title of my new book! A page turner that will keep you locked into the un-scrupulous world of the LED Cowboys and the LED Czars! The LED mafia taking over your world! Ha-ha…I can just see it…

Anyhow I was talking about signage but designed around LED rather then Neon. The flexible LED “tubes” do exist and from what I see can be bent in quite tight curves and shapes. It would not have the same sparkle as neon as they generally use a soft diffuser, which has different properties then the shaped glass the “neon” or cold cathode uses. Nevertheless you can certainly be creative though I would say with slightly less shape options. I am in Honk Kong tomorrow…probably the city where Neon was invented…I will have a look 🙂

Light watch 5-116: The LED – NEON alternative…