These are two of the designs I submitted to my university's art installation. Students were challenged with creating fun and interesting designs for ping pong paddles to be burned and engraved into ping pong paddles, which would then be hung within the university's art building as an installation. The university hosts annual ping pong tournaments for art students and several ping pong tables are found throughout campus design labs, so ping pong was both a running joke and a theme for the fine art department. Students were encouraged to include typography (especially puns) and words relating to ping pong and its cousin--beer pong. "Splash Zone" is a reference to beer pong but also to the tendency for ping pong balls to go flying in labs and sometimes strike students or, as in this case, fall into open liquids like students' coffee. During the early planning process of the installation, the "POW" paddle was selected to be created using a Glow Forge machine as a test. The installation is still currently under development.
