The lighting team at Hoare Lea used the ILP’s ‘How to be brilliant’ in September to drill down into what we mean by visual communication, the key role light and lighting can play, and how future technologies are profoundly changing this conversation.
The ILP’s autumn ‘How to be brilliant’ programme kicked off in September with a talk at the Lutron Experience Centre in London by the lighting team at Hoare Lea on ‘How to be brilliant… at visual communication’.
Project director Juan Ferrari was joined by principal lighting designer Chris Fox, graduate lighting designer Zoe Barkes, and lighting designer Joshua Welch. Lighting designer Megan McCormick, who had also been due to present, sadly could not attend on the night.
Juan opened the discussion by highlighting light’s uniqueness as a visual communication tool. ‘I think that lighting is a key language, a key communication tool or if we were talking about lighting controls a control protocol,’ he said.
‘As lighting designers, what do we do? What are we good at, what are we good at communicating? Are we effective at communicating through light itself, or are we more skilled at conveying lighting concepts through graphic design?’ he added.
Juan highlighted work the practice did a few years ago to illuminate ‘Head above water’, the 9m-high interactive wooden sculpture by the late artist Steuart Padwick that was sited on the banks of the River Thames, at Queen’s Stone jetty on the Southbank. The sculpture was designed to highlight, and tackle, stigma around mental illness.
‘The interesting thing about this piece was that it had communication at its heart. People could tweet their emotions and the sculpture reacted to that,’ said Juan.
‘One of the things I learnt on this project is that mental health issues often occur because people, for whatever reason, can’t speak out or because people feel that they’re not being listened to.
‘The great thing about this piece was when you tweeted your emotions, it reacted, instantly. It was listening to the people who were speaking to it and acknowledging the message was received,’ he added.
‘I think visual communication is possibly one of the broadest topics we could have chosen to talk about. A lot of us probably have very similar or different preconceptions about what “visual communication” is,’ then highlighted Zoe.
She asked the audience what they associated with the term ‘visual communication’, with answers ranging from anything from ‘pretty pictures’ through to ‘signage’, ‘graphics’, ‘social media’, even ‘streetlights.’
Other forms of visual communication, she outlined, included billboards and advertising, graphics and branding, facial expressions (although there had been discussion as to whether this was non-verbal rather than visual communication), emojis and emoticons.
UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
‘As a group, we define visual communication as sort of a universal language,’ emphasised Chris. ‘So, it transcends any language barriers; that idea of a picture paints a thousand words.
Visual communication tends to be a combination of an emitter, or the person crafting or conveying the message, the message itself, and the receiver, he pointed out.
‘There are a lot of variables within that; if you deliver a message badly, or perhaps with emotion behind it in a certain way, that could be perceived by a person in a million different ways. It could be dependent on their upbringing, their background, design philosophy and so on. So, there are different facets within it,’ Joshua said.
‘The human brain is wired for visual information,’ agreed Chris. ‘We process visual 60,000 times faster than text. Visual can simplify complex information, create emotional connections, make abstract concepts easier to grasp – diagrams, photographs, graphics, and so on. Visual breaks down barriers words alone might struggle to overcome.
‘By combining text with visual, we engage both the verbal and visual processing centres of the brain. It makes learning more effective and the information more memorable; visual is a powerful source of capturing attention and maintaining engagement. There are different layers of visual communication ranging from innate and universal through cultural and up to the very personal.’ he added.
‘Visual graphics can transcend language barriers and make information accessible to a global audience,’ Chris said.
Colour, too, is incredibly important in effective visual communication, Chris emphasised. ‘Choosing the right colour has a really big impact on your message,’ he said, with colour psychology now a big discussion-point within design.
There can also be important cultural nuances, he pointed out, with the colour red for example meaning something very different in China – where it symbolises luck – to the West, where it is more commonly associated with threat, anger or danger. Yellow, in turn, can be associated with energy and positivity, but some people may also find it overwhelming.
‘The point of visual communication is to tap into emotional connections, whether it’s a beautiful design experience or an arresting red stop sign,’ Chris concluded.
LIGHTING AND VISUAL COMMUNICATION
Zoe now turned to the role of light and lighting within visual communication. ‘Lighting, we believe at least, is extremely sensory,’ she pointed out.
‘It is everywhere nowadays. In museums and galleries, lighting can be used to create something very interactive and inspiring. From a scale of just being able to view a piece or artwork on a wall through to creating a sensory experience that children and all of us can be really intrigued by,’ she added.
The light artist James Turrell for example was ‘an excellent example’ of how light can be used to create a very experiential space. ‘One where we sit and we contemplate and it is an immersive experience, one that can change our perspective,’ Zoe highlighted.
FUTURE THOUGHTS
What, then, of the future? Here, the discussion turned to the use of VR, AI, augmented reality, drones and, increasingly targeted, increasingly personalised, advertising. ‘If we were all standing in Times Square could we all for example have different adverts shown to us on the same screen all at the same time?’ Joshua questioned.
Or how might cities themselves become more visual communicators? ‘How do or will our cities communicate to us in the future? Could we see more use of dimming and brightness, responding to numbers or mood,’ he said, referencing back to Juan’s opening remarks about ‘Head above water’.
‘It could be really engaging and fun. A street column in 2050, for example, could be completely different and convey a bunch more information than just a typical streetlight that we have at the moment,’ Joshua added.
‘How to be brilliant’, Zoe pointed out, is targeted at students and people who want to get into lighting design. ‘As someone who has just come out of university last year and only one year into the industry, visual communication has actually been something that I have been able to lean upon and use to help build my confidence,’ she said.
‘It is a language that needs to speak to everyone. So we challenge you, create visual communication, ask “is this the message I am meaning to communicate?”. If it’s not, work on it, play with it,’ Zoe added.
As the main presentation drew to a close, Juan then outlined some, for him, future gazing about where this all might go, especially in the context of AI. ‘The concept of a building speaking back to you though AI is quite an interesting one,’ he said.
‘Your building will start telling you, not only that you need to maintain that or that, but that your light fitting that you put on the fourth floor 15 years ago, it’s dying. My materials are ageing, in a bad way.
‘Imagine if you could have a conversation with a building in that respect? How amazing that would be. And I think we are in a day and age when we can dream about those sorts of things, where buildings can communicate back to you in the language that we speak,’ Juan added.
Image: the Hoare Lea team presenting at How to be brilliant, from left: Chris, Zoe, Joshua and Juan.
This is an abridged version of the article in the November/December edition of Lighting Journal. To read the full version, click on the page-turner on this web page.
