Mission
Paper Wing Designs creates practical instruments for specialized work, built around how people actually use them in the field.
Current work
Knowing what's in the air around you matters to industrial hygienists, environmental scientists, indoor air quality professionals, and anyone who wants a clearer picture of their own space. Most instruments for the job ask for trade-offs between how portable they are, how accurate their readings are, and how much work it takes to turn those readings into something useful.
The gap is especially visible in film and theater, where the long-standing standard for monitoring fog and haze has become hard to find and productions are still expected to monitor the air for the people working in it.
We are developing a silent, wearable aerosol monitor for the modern worker. The goal is to bring wearable efficiency and reporting efficiency together: small enough to wear through a live take, built to give readings you can trust, and designed to make reporting easier with features like cue marking and exposure records organized the way the job needs them. We're starting with film and theatrical production.
This is an active development project, not a finished product, and details will change as the work develops. If you work in theatrical production, industrial hygiene, environmental science, or indoor air quality, or you simply want a closer look at the air you live in, I'd like to hear about your experience with air monitoring, and I'm happy to share progress as the project develops.
Approach
Start from the work. Every design begins with what people actually do in the field, not with the instruments that already exist. A feature that doesn't help someone do their job doesn't belong.
Earn the accuracy. An instrument is only useful if its readings can be trusted. Paper Wing Designs builds on established sensing technology and treats calibration and verification as part of the design, not a final step.
Keep it within reach. The best instrument is the one people can actually own. Total cost of ownership matters as much as the purchase price, so the tools stay practical for small teams and individuals as well as large organizations.
About
I'm Nicholas Logsdon, the founder of Paper Wing Designs, and a field technician who builds the tools technicians need.
Since 2023 I've helped set up dozens of air monitoring projects, from small single-site jobs to large multi-site deployments, and supported many of them in the field. Today I'm the lead responsible for air monitoring equipment at an environmental services company in Southern California, and the person people call when an instrument isn't working.
One of the largest projects I've been part of was the Palisades and Altadena wildfire cleanup. As part of the team supporting air monitoring at both sites, I was responsible for equipment deployment across 22 aerosol photometers and six PM monitoring stations. I worked directly with the team responsible for networking the live readings and the public website, coordinating with them to keep the instruments online and reporting. For the first couple of months I was the primary technician supporting both sites: deploying, troubleshooting, and repairing equipment, and training the crew who would run it.
Before environmental work, I spent two years in lighting research and development, testing and prototyping products to strict UL standards. I've also spent years leading teams under constant pressure to deliver the highest standard of performance and quality.
What I work with:
- Perimeter PM monitoring stations and weather stations
- Aerosol photometers and personal monitors
- Indoor air quality instruments
- Deployment setup, calibration, troubleshooting, and repair
I've used this equipment every day and heard the same complaints from the people who rely on it. I founded Paper Wing Designs to build instruments with those technicians in mind, starting with a silent, wearable aerosol monitor for film and theatrical production.
If you work in industrial hygiene, environmental consulting, indoor air quality, or production safety, I'd like to hear what your instruments get right and what they get wrong.
Follow along
Leave your details to hear about progress, or just leave a note about your experience with air monitoring. No email is needed if you only want to comment.
