The story behind sisimono: From surfboard idea to lighting design
I’ve been surfing since I was ten years old. It’s the one constant in a pretty busy life, the thing that makes my clock tick. Growing up in the Netherlands makes that a bit of a challenge. We don’t exactly have world-class waves, so someone like me ends up doing a lot of daydreaming.
After graduating and starting an office job, the daydreaming only got worse. Boards, surf trips, looking for the next swell, all of it lived rent-free in my head.
Eventually I came across a French company that was 3D-printing surfboards. That idea hit me like a truck. I thought: how hard can it be? (Very haha)
So I ordered a 3D printer.
The plan was simple: model a surfboard and print it. Reality turned out it was… slightly more complicated.
A small printer means a small build volume. Printing something the size of a surfboard takes forever. And testing in Amsterdam every test run means a jump in the canals or a drive to the coast and hoping for waves, which, as Dutch surfers know, is never guaranteed.
At some point the project got parked. Maybe it’ll come back someday. sisimono Surfboads, (it does have a nice ring to it) who knows.
But now there was a 3D printer sitting in the corner.
Like most people with a new printer, the first things that came out were benchies, small gadgets, gifts for friends, the usual stuff. Fun, but also (in my opinion) a bit… pointless. More small plastic objects that didn’t really add anything than more mess to my home.
The goal slowly shifted: make something big. Something that when my friends came over would see and say:
“Wait… you printed that?”
A lamp seemed like the perfect project. Something sculptural, warm, and useful. But after searching the internet I found that none of the 3D-printable lamps out there quite felt right.
So the next thought was obvious: alright then… let’s try making one.
With 25cm of cubic build volume, the design naturally became modular and stackable. Old modular lamp designs became references. Shapes were tested. Different translucency levels were printed and compared.
The outside came together fairly quickly.
The inside didn’t.
The goal was to print as much of the lamp as possible, including the internal light structure. After a lot of trial and error, the solution became a tall column printed in segments that click together, with a groove for a LED strip running through it.
Once that part finally worked, the first prototype was finished.
When I posted that prototype online for the first time, something that I could’ve never thought of happened. Within the first weekend, the video went viral and over a million people saw it.
Suddenly it wasn’t just a lamp for my apartment anymore. It became clear that there were more people with a 3D printer and wanting to print something big and beautiful but being limited by their build volume.
That’s when the idea shifted.
The whole project started because of a 3D printer. It made more sense to release the design itself and let people print their own version. That way it could become something for the 3D printing community rather than just another product that’s being put out there.
So instead of selling a finished lamp, the decision was to only release the files.
A modular lamp system you can print as a table lamp, floor lamp, night light, whatever you want. Small, medium, large. Any color. Any material. Mix and match shades and bases.
What started as a surfboard experiment slowly turned into a 3D design brand.
And honestly, the best part has been the process itself, learning everything from graphic design to lamp fabrication along the way, sharing it online, and seeing other people get excited about printing their own version. That just makes me extremely happy.
And that’s how sisimono started.
