like an onion, it has many layers, all 3mm thick<li>full transparent acrylic on the front</li><li>mostly full HDF, with frosted acrylic inserts for diffusing the led strip into the shape of the logo</li><li>four structural HDF layers with a single continuous path for the led strip, which is slightly different (somewhat simplified) from the "front" shape</li><li>backing PMMA layer, to somewhat protect the led strip, and prevent it from falling out if it unglues itself.</li>
The general shape is based off of a version of the logo q3k :blobcatcoffee: (npub1y0e…t60a) designed for the [Warsaw Hackerspace website](https://hackerspace.pl/ ), aptly named "neon-syrenka.svg" ("neon-mermaid.svg"), but it took a few years before a physical representation in a (pseudo-)neon form was created
most of the "artistic" design i did, including the simplified ledstrip path, was done in Inkscape, with the electronics box designed using FreeCAD