International Lighting Design Family Tree: The Digital Version!

In 2011, Light Collective scribbled out our personal branch of the Lighting Design Family Tree and then in 2014, we went on to create a bigger family tree to include other designers in the UK to demonstrate the entangled mesh of practices and people. In 2011, we included 82 designers across 47 companies. In 2014, we expanded to include 253 designers from 142 companies. UK designers shared their roots and journey with us and enabled us to create a colourful graphic. 

This year, we kicked off something bigger. With the help of LIGMAN, we began the creation of an International Lighting Design Family Tree (ILDFT).

The ILDFT project came about because Mr Paul Nulty suggested we revive it. We stood there when he said it, laughed at him and said it would never happen. We cannot work out why or how but we did revive it and, fools that we are, figured we needed to create an international version this time. We asked designers to provide their data to help us get it right, sharing with us all the companies that they have worked with in their lighting design career. So far over 900 of you have responded!

We had planned to use this data to create a physical version of the International Lighting Designers Family Tree on the LIGMAN stand at Light + Building 2020 but the event was cancelled and this was unable to happen. Everyone in the lighting industry was disappointed when they couldn’t attend Light & Building - manufacturers were disappointed because they were unable to show off and share their new products and designers were disappointed as they weren't able to meet colleagues, soak up all the new tech in one go and then get drunk at the Irish Pub. We were disappointed as we had spent a long time planning the International Lighting Design Family Tree and working out how we were going to build a physical version of it on the LIGMAN stand.

You may remember seeing something about it at the start of 2020 and you may have even submitted your data. Then the world changed forever and it would have slipped your mind. We filed it away as something that wasn’t going to happen and got on with the serious stuff. In the last few weeks it occurred to us that, as over 900 people shared their information with us, it was unfair to never realise it in some way.

But imagine the complexity of a visualisation that detailed all these career paths spanning both companies and countries! In order to create a physical realisation of the data, we had to pare it down a bit. We chose independent designers who said they would be attending Light & Building and created a plan for a large graphic that would have mapped the career paths of those chosen, with coloured lines to represent the geographic region the designer is from and linking pegs denoting out each of the design companies they worked at, arranged in circles according to country. Originally we planned to use wool to represent the lines but with all that wool stuck in a warehouse in Prague, we decided to draw a digital version and to share some facts from the submissions.

The new version is truly global; exploring the career paths of the lighting design profession everywhere. Analysis of the data allowed us to see which countries designers come from, when their career has taken them overseas, what the most popular background is for a designer, the gender split, the age split, popular names for designers or companies and other facts like how many companies people have worked for.

We believe the creation of data is important to enable us to learn about our history and our community.  So follow the link to digital version - it is a big drawing and you’ll need to zoom and pan to follow yourself or others.  At the moment we are sharing it as a PDF whilst we look into finding a more user friendly way of publishing the final image. There are three sections in the PDF - how it works, a key to all the companies and the drawing itself. Enjoy.

The long term plan for the project is to continue to add designers on to the Family Tree as part of an online version that will grow digitally and allow us to make comparisons over the life the project.  If you’re inspired to add yourself, the form is still open and we’re continuing to investigate a way to create a self-generating digital and interactive version for the future.

We couldn’t have done this project without the support of Ligman and our thanks go out to them for the assistance and also to arc magazine for the help they gave us in promoting the idea.  We are really disappointed that we couldn’t build it in real life on their stand at Light & Building 2020…maybe next time?

www.lightingdesignfamilytree.com