Lava Lamp

Tactile graphics serve to allow blind and low-vision people to feel objects and ideas that are otherwise intangible or dangerous to touch. The floating goo within a lava lamp is in constant motion, morphing based on the temperature currents as heat rises and colder goo falls back down within the body. Purely visual, but unable to be touched.

I decided to illustrate the lava using a series of dot height coloration that creates tactile depth which is fun to explore by touch. The body of the lamp is very minimalist, but has a very distinct shape built out of subtle curves and angles that I dialed in with quadratic and cubic curves.

Download the Lava Lamp SVG file

A close view of a lava lamp sitting on a table. The lamp has a distinct tapered shape, thinner at the top, flaring out in a curved bottle-like shape to where the glass midsection meets the metal base, then the base tapers back inwards before flaring back out again to the foot of the lamp. The lava within the lamp is made up of a curling and swirling shape in the middle, surrounded by circular and ellipsoidal blobs of more lava.