Nulty takes a look under the covers
Evolution is without a doubt the secret to survival. We often find ourselves afraid of change, scared of loosing our identity and recognition. But within an industry that is constantly striving to impress and progress towards the highest of expectations, change is crucial. This is something Lighting Magazine has embraced over the last 46 years, finding its niche as a specialist crossover magazine encompassing Architecture and Light.
Its ability and flexibility to adapt has led to its success with us lighting enthusiasts, and its newest reface is bolder, slicker and a more inspirational addition to our shelves than ever.
The revolution we have seen in lighting design isn’t just the domination of LED, it’s finally seeing a collaboration between architects and lighting designers working together understanding the power light has in space. Lighting Magazine’s revamped first issue celebrates this growing confidence and alliance, along with trends, techniques and most crucially, modern day inspiration. It aims throughout to capture the equilibrium of daylight with artificial integration: it’s at this point that Ray Molony of Lighting Magazine explains….‘Where the magic really happens’.
Primarily, the magazine has unveiled a new ‘Vogue’ style aesthetic that’s undeniably much more impressive than its previous, slightly more ‘Hello!’ magazine type self. At first glance the magazine stands proud as a complete gallery of high quality architectural visuals and polished textures. However, laced with additional artistic sketches and creative use of tracing paper overlays, it really gives an extra visual dimension, keeping us completely engaged throughout.
As architectural lighting designers we flick through countless magazines each month and we generally agree on what we dislike about them:
We’d like to see fewer adverts, and the ones that do make it need to show inspirational, contemporary products. Frankly, we don’t want to see the same old adjustable downlights that we specify every single day. We want something that catches our eye, something to get us a little excited.
We want less self-praising adverts; nobody enjoys suppliers’ overjoyed reviews of their own products. They attempt to spiral us down a completely biased subjective path that we can see straight through. What we want is objective information, observations and comparisons, so we can make our own judgements.
The magazine covers technology and science, focusing this time on the topic ‘is light a drug?’. Putting lighting into every day life applications like this results in a much more realistic and interesting read and not so much a resit of our A-Level physics exam.
Finally, what we really want to read about are the people, objects and spaces that have really shaped our industry. This first issue includes a tribute to László Moholy-Nagy, his influential work within the Bauhaus, his light space modulator (a visionary multimedia artwork that helped invest the artistic dialogue between light, shadow, humans, machines and motion) and his present day influence on lighting.
As lighting designers, we all share a creative bone, but from time to time we still need a little bit of inspiration. That’s why Lighting Magazine has put together a series of categorised mood boards to help send us that little spark. Not only is this a great way to recognise the fantastic work being done today, but a way to help encourage, motivate and showcase the endless possibilities open to this our enigmatic industry.
