The project
Developed for Commerce Studio, a software company, this is a light box for food photography that ships as a physical add-on to their platform. Commerce Studio's own customers are food businesses, so each box is branded for the end customer rather than for Commerce Studio. The product is in production and still being optimised.
The approach
The problem the box solves is consistency. A restaurant photographing its own dishes gets a different result every time depending on the light in the room, and inconsistent images are exactly what a menu platform cannot work with. Controlling the light means controlling everything around it, so the box had to shut out the room, hold the phone in a fixed position, and be simple enough that kitchen staff would use it without being trained.
How it was made
The panels are laser cut acrylic, white around the sides and top, with a green base so dishes sit against a consistent backdrop. An LED bar runs inside the lid, and a slot cut into the top holds a phone at a fixed height and angle over the food. The corners are held by 3D printed PETG brackets, which do the entire job of assembling the flat acrylic panels into a box. Branding is applied as cut vinyl, so each unit can carry a different customer's logo without changing anything about how it is made.
Where the same approach works
A product that ships in numbers has to be designed around repeatability rather than around one perfect example. Flat panels and printed corner brackets mean any unit can be built, branded, and if necessary rebuilt, without special tooling and without a minimum order. The same approach suits branded display units, kit form enclosures, in-store fixtures, and any product where one design has to carry many different customers' identities.
