This project was a fun and interesting challenge. I was tasked with creating a giant lite-brite in the shape of New Jersey.
I laid out a grid of circles in illustrator, overlaid an outline of NJ and deleted the ones outside. The file was then laser cut out of 0.25″ acrylic sheet and fit into a groove in the wooden box. It was backlit using a fluorescent tube and a shower curtain to diffuse the light. Later, rope handles and a removable cover to keep the pegs in (not pictured) were added.
The biggest challenge turned out to be the hole size as I did not originally have pegs to measure and my initial guess was slightly too big for the normal orientation. Luckily, lite-brite pegs are tapered so I enlarged the holes (by hand) using a step drill to allow them to be stuck in backwards.