Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the podcast about lighting matters. Our unflinching conversations uncover the nuances and complexities which shape the craft of lighting design.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: We explore the pivotal whys behind a lighting designer's choices and find honest answers to your most challenging lighting questions. Because lighting matters.
Hello. Welcome to another edition of the Lighting Matters podcast. We're so excited to be talking to you today. I am Lisa Reed with Reed Burkitt Lighting Design.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: And I'm Avi Moore with Moorelight. And we have two special guests today. Two guests? Two guests. Two guests are better than one. What can I say? And we have a sponsor, so Brett and Kenny from Focus Lighting, thank you for being here today.
[00:00:53] Speaker C: Thanks for having us.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: And a very, very special thanks to Lumen Pulse, who is our sponsor today. I don't know about you guys. Definitely one of my favorites. They actually can ship a little faster than that other one from, you know.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: No, no, we're talking about Lumen Pulse.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Yeah, Lumen Pulse.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: I need them to ship fast on something right now. So I'm singing high praises and crossing all my fingers.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: And now Lumen Pulse is no longer just Lumen Pulse. They're all the other brands as well. Yeah, they have some exciting things going on with companies.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, they really. They really have. Well, they're just. They're so solid. They're a go to for us for. We do a lot of bridge lighting design, and that's just. That's an easy.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: No more Chiclets. Right? Like, that's. That's what Sean in our office calls it. Right? The RGBW Chicklets. No more Chiclets on high power stuff. That's very, very cool.
[00:01:50] Speaker C: And not so easy to do. Or at least not so easy to do. Well.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: Right.
[00:01:54] Speaker C: We've been using them for years, if. If not decades at this point. And I'm also looking forward to seeing the Exenius stuff come out, which is another one of their brands that will be showing up in the US Soon. Soon.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: Yeah. We actually took a product and did a 3D rendering of it from Lumen Pulse, and there was like these weird striations in the rendering. We're like, that's kind of weird, you know, but, you know, it should be okay. Then we hung the fixture off the side of a building and the striations were right there. So it's like, hey, wow. Your IES files are actually pretty accurate.
[00:02:27] Speaker D: Super accurate.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And it was. It's like this little flaw in a super tight beam on an older product that they had. And talking to them, they're like, yeah, we corrected that. Here's the new IES file. We tested it with the IES file. We got the new fixture. So just hands down, been really great. You know, I think for me, manufacturers who like correct the things that they notice or even like correct a thing on a job site that they may have created and then return your phone call to take care of it, like, that's, that's huge. And Luma Pulse actually does that.
[00:03:01] Speaker C: My favorite story about Lumen Pulse is actually them preventing a problem from happening. So they have the. A line of ingrades. And we all know how notoriously difficult ingrades can be. And they ship it in two parts. There's the housing, and then they hold off on shipping the sealed guts of the, you know, the fixture itself. And what they do is before they will ship out the fixture part of the fixture, they make the installer sign off on a piece of paper, like with a signature that they installed the housing per the instructions, the depth, the gravel, the all this other stuff. And then when you sign off on it that you installed it and therefore the drainage is there, then they'll ship you the rest of the fixture.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: That's pretty great.
[00:03:50] Speaker C: I don't know how often they can really enforce it, but I think that's great.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: I love that.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: Not to get too into the weeds, but I've been talking to a lot of our clients lately about, you know, if we can get it installed right. That's a big chunk of that problem with in grades.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: So, Kenny, why don't we kick it off with you, Tell us a little bit about how you got into this crazy world and then we'll let Brett do that and jump into some topics.
[00:04:15] Speaker C: Sure. I feel like my story is a fairly typical one. Theater. First high school, then college, then graduate school, then back home to New York and spent about 10 years as a self employed lighting designer. And the more interesting part of the story is how I got out of theater or how I got out of theater. And for me, it all boiled down to the sudden realization I had or not so sudden realization that my theater career wasn't giving me everything I wanted to be. Those Broadway directors just weren't calling and that I wasn't gonna get it. I wasn't gonna get there. I just wasn't built for it. And then came the realization that theater wasn't so important, but lighting was. And then I started exploring, where else can I do lighting? One thing led to another, bounced around, and then I found Brett.
[00:05:05] Speaker B: Oh, what a great segue so, Brett, how did you land in architect?
[00:05:12] Speaker D: It is a similar path, you know, started as probably a lot of us in. In high school. Got sort of picked out of a speech class by my drama teacher in high school. And first, you know, they tried to get me to act on stage, and that was. They thought it was okay. And I was like, I'm not doing this.
I quickly got introduced to the. To the lightboard and to, you know, doing running sound and things like that, and ended up going to undergraduate school for sort of general theater design. Hadn't really found lighting. That came probably the middle of my sophomore year. It's actually kind of a funny story. My technical director for the theater I was working in said, hey, there's a touring show of Dreamgirls coming to town, and they need a follow spot op. You want to join me? And we'll do it. And I was like, that's great, except I've never run a follow spot before. He's like, it's fine, you know, just come a little early, we'll practice. It'll be no big deal. So I get there early. You know, they're making me run this queue over and over and over again. We get to the show, and I don't know the show at all. So we get to the. We get to the show and the first act is a bit of a mess. But the second act, I'm starting to get the hang of the follow spot. And we get to my cue, and the stage manager calls it, and basically the whole idea is I'm supposed to tighten up my spot onto the head of the lead actress that's in the center of the stage. And as I do that, what they didn't tell me is that all of the lights in the theater blacked out except mine at that point. So now I'm shaking and I'm like, oh, my God, I can't believe I'm doing this. And so the stage manager calls for the next cue, which is to widen back out. And what I've now, what I then realize is the actress has changed her costume and so revealed this sort of full sequin gown. And as my follow spot comes out, she starts to twirl around and fills the whole theater with like, a mirrorball effect. And the audience goes nuts, right? And the stage manager sort of turns over the comms and like. Like spot two, that's. That applause is for you. And that.
[00:07:09] Speaker C: That was.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh, I have chills.
[00:07:11] Speaker D: Yeah, right? Like that. That was. That was the moment where I sort of said, yeah, that's what I want to do. So fast forward. Finished up undergrad, ended up going to Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh for, specifically for lighting design. Lucky enough to land there with Cindy Lamaro, who's the professor, former professor there. And Cindy was great because she, she knew not everyone was going to get into theater. And so she taught us about theater, about opera, about TV commercials and architecture. So I got a little bit of a glimpse into my future and ended up doing a couple summers at Williamstown Theatre Festival. Got to learn about professional, working professionally in the theater, got to meet some Broadway designers. I was a board op for Ken Billington, which was amazing. And at that point I was like, I started to know a lot of people. I figured I'd move back to New York and make a go of it. Turns out I get back, I graduate, get to New York and about, I don't know, two weeks after I landed in New York, Cindy calls me and says, I have a friend, his name is Paul Gregory. He runs an architectural lighting firm and needs a draftsman. You want a job on a gig? It's like, I need some money. Sure, I'll do that. I figured it's, this is like a six week drafting gig. So I go and do an interview with Paul and 28 years later, here I am. Wow. I mean, it's funny. Like, I think back on that journey and what I try to remember about that is I can think about five people that influence me at each of those sort of big stops. So my undergrad lighting professor, Tom Callery, he gave me a lot of advice. But he said to me, probably my first week of school, he said, you got to get a 3.5 average. You know, I was not a great student. I was like a C plus, B minus student. But all it took was for him to say those few words. And I was an A student all through college just because he suggested that I do that. There's examples of that all throughout as I sort of made my journey. And it's just a nice reminder to me. And I try to remind others that we kind of have an obligation to, you know, even just a few words can change the trajectory of someone's career. And it's important we share that, right, that influence.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: I mean, you must have had some, said some magic words to Kenny, you're.
[00:09:26] Speaker C: Hired, get back to work.
And the way my career played out, I guess at the beginning it looked like nothing but options and possibilities. And now when I look back on it, everything seems inevitable. And it seems like everything Happened because of the thing that came before it, going all the way back to when I first came back to New York and became the Hemsley Internet at New York City Opera. And then I met Stan Pressner and then I worked the Lincoln Center Festival and I met Robert Wilson because of that. And then I did the Ring Cycle and then I didn't want to do theater anymore. And along the way I also, thanks to that one internship, I also met my wife. So talk about an internship, really setting, setting a path.
[00:10:11] Speaker D: And actually I learned this yesterday. It was actually another, you know, talk about origin stories being similar. I met my wife at an internship at our first internship at Williamstown. So.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:10:21] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:10:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I always think about that, those, those just very thin threads, like one slightly different decision and how your life would go down a completely different path. It is amazing.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think you guys know, but I mean I learned about this world through Lighting Dimensions magazine, which I don't know if you guys still have. I'm still in search of 1997. Excuse me, no, 99 lighting dimensions. Schuler Shook was running an ad for senior lighting designer. I'm looking for a copy of that Lighting Dimension.
[00:10:56] Speaker D: I'll have to look. I might have those on my shelf.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: Oh my God. Yeah, I mean I tossed them all out years ago and now, now I'm like, man, I need that white page with one image. Right?
[00:11:09] Speaker B: But yeah, I checked our stock, I couldn't find it. Avi.
[00:11:12] Speaker D: That was where I first saw Paul, Paul Gregory. He had gotten featured in Lighting Dimensions. It probably was 1995. He had been working on the Intel Tower in Chile. And it was the first time that I'd ever seen. I think it was the first time sort of color changing exterior lighting was ever used on a large scale on an outside building. It was old Vara Lite. It was the sort of the original Iridian fixture that ETC eventually sold, but previously it was a Verilite and he had like 100 of them outside. There's a whole story about how we did a test on Riverside Church here in Manhattan as a mock up, as a proof of concept and then brought it in, all the concepting and all the renderings. And I remember reading about it thinking, that's amazing to do it on that kind of a scale. It's not just a theatrical thing that goes away in a few weeks, but it's a permanent thing that can be enjoyed for years and years.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: I wasn't really planning on going here, but I do want to ask, what do you guys think, how do we get more of the theatrical education? How do we get more of the theater kids? I hate to use that, but let's just use that to know that we exist. Usitt wasn't in my book this year because we had a different exhibit. But are you guys involved in usitt? Do you go down that path? How do we get more of the theater people into this in that younger age?
[00:12:34] Speaker D: You know, I really sort of take inspiration from Cindy, from Carnegie Mellon in that if we can. I do a class every year at Carnegie Mellon ends up being like a two and a half hour masterclass. And we, we basically show them a project from beginning to end. All the warts, everything that worked, everything that didn't work, try to compare what we do and sort of show them similarities to their process. You know, I'm not sure every lighting designer has a similar process as we do, but we borrow a lot of language and process from theater because a lot of our folks are from that background. So I think a connection to the universities directly. I think, you know, we're trying to reach out to not just Carnegie Mellon, but, you know, places like SCAD and others that have great programs and just try to introduce the students to the possibilities. Because Cindy was right. Not everyone's going to be able to do theater, unfortunately.
[00:13:27] Speaker C: And Paul did a lot of this too. And Brett, I think you'll remember the story better than I will, but didn't he go down to North Carolina School of the Arts and he did a large scale evening mockup with color changing fixtures that were loaned from a manufacturer and it was just the whole front.
[00:13:45] Speaker D: Of their main building with the students.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: Got the students involved in doing the mockup?
[00:13:51] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. I mean, basically they were all little assistant designers getting to see how Paul thought and how he worked. And basically he design it kind of on the spot with them because it was, it was a color changing installation. So they got to all sort of take part on that. You know, that's when you see it, that's when you can kind of store it away and you, and you, you understand and believe it. And I think that probably was a really powerful class for him to do.
[00:14:16] Speaker C: And when you do it, it's fun for theater people. I mean, what theater lighting designer do you know that said drawing a light plot is my favorite part?
So I think it's the doing that appeals to theater people. And so if you try to take the more traditional architectural approach and you go and show them a paper project, it's not going to resonate in the same way as Paul was able to do in that one example.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: I love this. Actually, you're giving me this great idea because we've had this, our eye on this building in St. Louis that we've long wanted to do a design and we've talked about, you know, we should just go do a sort of guerrilla lighting mockup. But then to do that with local theater students would be a great, great introduction for them.
[00:15:11] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: I've been talking with, you know, Lisa and I both went to ku and Iva was a theater person and Lisa was in the Archie program. And they are a building apart from each other.
[00:15:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Right next to each other. I walked right by the building all the time, never talked.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: And when I was there, Dr. Moek was there and he was doing a little bit of communicating between the theater department because they were playing with the renderman down in the theater department, and he was playing with renderman and radiosity and he was writing all the code to make it all happen. So I was fortunate enough to have that connection. But now I've. I've kind of gone back to the theater group. Most of my professors have retired at this point to say, hey, you know, like, I will come once a year. And I gave a talk about 12, 14 years ago about everything you can do with your BFA, dare I say it, you could become a rep. But, you know, you can do so much with a BFA beyond the theater and having that. I think you hit the nail on the head. Like providing that education, even one, one hour. Right. Once a year to those different theater programs across the country would be huge. Maybe that's something Lisa, we could talk about for our iald, you know, group that we're putting together.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: Go. Advocacy. Yeah, yeah.
[00:16:33] Speaker D: And there's a ton of benefit for the architectural lighting firms. I mean, we. A theater education is an incredible life education. The ultimate deadline. The curtain's gonna go up, you gotta get the show done, and you gotta manage people. And it's all these things that sometimes you don't learn until after you get outta school for most career tracks, but for theater kids come outta school with a ton more experience.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: Yeah, hands on. Avi and I were talking just this morning about having a bias for action. Bias toward action, you know, like you have to get things done. Yep. Yeah.
[00:17:10] Speaker C: And theater offers that. It's the best education for life, for business and collaboration, communication, prioritizing, like Brett said, getting it done. It's some of the best stuff. And of course, I'm biased by saying.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: That, Yeah, I guess the three of us are really biased.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: I'm over here, the architectural engineering major, and I still love it. I mean, I just. Yeah, the people that we've had in our firm who have a theater background, they just jump on board quickly. It's this. It's not a slow ramp up for them. So, yeah, I'm impressed and maybe envious of your. All of your educations. So maybe to shift us a little bit, I'll start with you, Kenny. Do you have a favorite project from the past or now that you're working on that you want to tell us.
[00:17:59] Speaker C: About from the past? I think I'm going to go with Museum of Natural History in Los Angeles, where we did two wings of Dinosaur exhibits. And the way we approached it was every specimen was basically a sculpture. And because every specimen was different, it was a unique sculpture. And there was this weird sequence to the construction where first they finished out the envelope of the hall, the interior, then they built the dinosaurs, then they installed all of the exhibit, including the platforms that the dinosaurs appeared to sit on.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:18:42] Speaker C: And then. And our lights went under the platform. So if you're going to take the approach that you're lighting a dinosaur and each one is a unique sculpture, when you're sitting at your desk, you have no idea where to put the light fixtures. You can't tell. And you can't even ask for a sample to do a mockup, you know, a sample of the material to do a mockup. So one of our other designers, now principal JP Lira, and I, we went out to the job site and basically I was the one handling all the gear. He was being the artistic eyes. And so I got to stand under this fully assembled T. Rex, and I'm holding this monopoint track head, shooting it up into the rib cage and say, is that good? And he'd be like, no, a little bit to the left, a little bit down, you know, until we found the exact perfect place. I would hold it. A third person came and measured exactly where I was. And then that was what we drew, that was what they installed, and it looked great. So I got to spend a day or two hanging out, like right here with all of these dinosaurs.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, lighting takes us to amazing places, for sure.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: How about you, Brad?
[00:19:55] Speaker D: You know, it's kind of like picking children. How do you. How do you pick the best one? I guess one of the most memorable moments, though, as a lighting designer, we had designed the lighting for a park down in Dallas. They ended up calling it Clyde Warren Park. And if you're familiar with Dallas, Woodall Rogers Freeway sort of cuts a trail right through the middle of this section in Dallas, sort of dividing the uptown neighborhood from sort of the theater district. And it's kind of a subterranean freeway. So it really is a cut. And what they ended up doing is to create this park is they decked it over. And so they literally created 5, 7 acres of park space out of thin air, which was kind of amazing. So before the park was built, we had to go down for a mockup. We were mocking up a number of things, including some tree lighting. And we were the designer on the project. Josh and I were down there and the neighborhood is empty, like, kind of scary empty. And we're like, what are we doing out here all alone doing these mock ups at 10 o'clock at night? And, you know, we got it done, it was fine. And we built the project, which was. Seemed to be well received. And as you do, you leave town and get the photos and you're pretty proud of it. But I ended up going back to Dallas about two or three years later, and I was giving a talk down there. And after the talk, we went out for dinner. And turns up, they chose a restaurant right next to Clyde Warren Park. And as we came out of dinner, this was, remember, this is a neighborhood that there was no park and there were no people. And this now, nine o'clock at night on a summer night, and the park is filled and there are kids playing outside in the fountains at 9:00 at night, having a great time. And just to think about, like, the lighting that we worked on helped, along with a lot of other things, transform and reconnect these two neighborhoods. And it was just a nice reminder of a lot of what we do matters. It may not recognize it when we walk off the job site, we may, but there's a huge opportunity to change people's lives, even just in something like a park. So I always think about that.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: And for those like missing this. Right. 9:00 at night, there's no sun, right?
[00:22:04] Speaker D: Yeah, it was dark out.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: All too often I see landscape designers, architects rendering these things during the day and they Forget about that 9 o'clock at night park or going through an Airport at 3:00 on December 15, or better yet, December 23 or something like that, you're under electric light, not daylight. And that has to be designed.
[00:22:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:31] Speaker D: And I appreciate that you say electric light. That's one of my pet peeves. Say artificial light. That is so wrong.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: There's nothing artificial.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: It's very real light.
[00:22:42] Speaker D: Exactly.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: I was on a conversation last week, a high end residential, and somebody said artificial is like. I'm sorry, I have to stop you there. There's nothing artificial about light.
[00:22:55] Speaker D: Amen.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: Daylight or electric light.
[00:22:57] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: And we've had a guest on, and Lisa and I have really been kind of focusing on this idea of four visual professionals on a project and there's really nothing else. Right. You have the architect, interior designer, sometimes the same, sometimes different, landscape designer and the lighting designer. And ultimately there's luminaire number one, the sun luminaire number one A, the sky, cloudy day kind of thing. And then all the electric light. So it has to be designed and, you know, somebody has to coordinate it. But ultimately, like there's really nobody else involved in a job that is working on the visual environment of a space.
[00:23:39] Speaker D: I think about what we do as lighting designers and I often say to people and to myself, you know, we're kind of the guardians of the architect's vision. From my point of view, if you're, if you're a well trained lighting designer, if you spent a lot of hours with a light fixture in your hand and you understand how light works, the architect hasn't spent those hours. They've seen a lot of things and they have a vision, but they don't necessarily know how their design is going to look when you layer natural and electric light on top of it. We're probably the best suited of those group of people to be able to see the finished product. And therefore it's kind of our responsibility to make sure we tell them what it's going to look like, good or bad, successful or not. We've got to speak up. If they looks like they're going down a wrong road and they're not going to reach their vision. It's an important thing for us to be responsible for that. I feel.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: Well, we could steal from Spider man on that one. Right. With great power comes great responsibility. Right?
[00:24:40] Speaker D: Exactly, exactly.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: Both electric power and design power.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: I mean, you've already told at least two stories about that power. Right. First with the, on the stage with the dress, turning the whole room into sparkles. And that was the power of light. And then with the landscape over the highway and just how that draws people. There's so much power that we have as lighting professionals.
[00:25:09] Speaker C: And what I find interesting because I just see more and more of it now, is the difference that rendering now makes. And so any computer rendering implies certain amount of lighting design and a lot of the renderings we're seeing are not renderings we created. They're being made by the architect's team. And sometimes it's outsourced beyond that. And then we're coming back and working with that team to try and make the rendering more accurate, more real.
[00:25:41] Speaker B: How often do you find yourselves that's. There's this balance, right, of designing the lighting and achieving the architect's vision or that rendering. Right. So there's. I don't know. I always find that a funny collaboration sometimes of are we just making it look like they want it to look, which is one aspect of our careers as lighting designers, and. Or are we helping them decide how it's going to look with the light?
[00:26:09] Speaker D: I think we probably take a step back and we try to ask a lot of questions about what is the architect's goal? What is the owner's goal? Is there a vision that they have for, you know, where they want people to look, what emotion do they want people to feel? And sometimes architects will do a rendering and they think it looks beautiful, but it doesn't necessarily either match what's really going to happen a lot of mice, or even achieve their goal when you actually start to layer electric light onto it. So we kind of feel like it's our obligation to, like, ask. You know, usually we're brought on a little bit, you know, in the schematic design phase a little bit later than the architect. And so they've been working on a design and they've come up with their big ideas. We ask them to not start talking about lighting first. We want to back up. We want to hear all the words and reasons why they've designed this building or the space, the way they've done it, and get to the understanding of that goal. And then once we've got that, then we feel we can sort of step forward and go, all right, how do we layer light in to make this successful? And then we usually end up with a rendering that looks somewhat different than the first one that gets drawn by the architect.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: But I think to Kenny's point, it is interesting to think about the fact that to create that rendering, somebody designed the light in that virtual space to create that image. And I think, Brett, to your point, a lot of times that's just light for light's sake. To show the space, as opposed to what the solution to illuminate that space should be.
[00:27:40] Speaker D: We try to think of it as a composition, you know, like almost like a piece of art. A foreground, a background, a frame, and a focus and so take all those layers of light and think about where do you want layers of light and the architecture and the colors and the texture and of the space. Put them all together and you get to play artist and craft the composition that will be experienced in the space. That doesn't usually get thought of by the renderers. You're right. They're often just differentiating between the different surfaces in most renderings, preliminary renderings that we get.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: And the omni light. Right. The thing, that light that just goes all directions.
Favorite virtual light fixture.
[00:28:22] Speaker C: And the renderings are also a great opportunity to consider the colors and the finishes. Many times we'll see a design with a light colored ceiling and it maybe supports the idea, but it doesn't really intellectually, but it doesn't compose or it doesn't achieve it. And then we'll take that rendering and put a couple different layers on it and show it with a gray ceiling, a red ceiling or whatever and show what the options, you know, what the alternatives could be. And on a number of occasions, an architect was actually grateful for it because they could then see the difference and the improvement that it could make.
[00:29:02] Speaker D: You know, we love working on helping to display the architecture and the design through renderings, but we kind of feel the ultimate way of getting an owner to understand an architect to understand what the space is going to look like is to do some type of live testing and mock up. We moved to our current office up in Harlem on 116th Street. And one of the reasons we chose this space is, is because it gave us the ability to create a lighting lab. And it's, it's a great space. It's just to give you a visual. It's about 25ft by 25ft, two stories tall. It's almost like a little mini black box theater.
We've got, I think it's seven line sets, a roll drop at the back. What? Kenny? Like five or six dimming systems. And the whole goal of it is, and we've got a wood shop downstairs so we can actually build hunks of architecture. And we've done that. We've built big pieces that we've hung from the line sets and lit up because you can do a rendering. But again, seeing is believing. If you bring an architect or an owner in and you actually show them what it's going to look like and it looks great, there's a sigh of relief. There's one less thing they have to worry about. They can go worry about their other problems getting the building built and Then they trust us. And so we invest a lot of time spending time in that lighting lab to build those mock ups and to just show our work as much as possible. It's also, I mean, for us, it's actually, it's part of our design process. It's not just show them the results. But, you know, as a lighting designer, you come up with an idea, or maybe the architect comes up with a lighting idea and you want to test it to sort of make sure it works to reduce your risk. But where the fun part starts is you see it and then you start asking, how can you make it better? You know, do you move the light? Do you have a different light? Do you have a different material? Do you change the angle? And that sort of iterative process constantly improves the design ideas. And it gets you so much further than the first idea that you thought of, you know, staring at the rendering or staring at the plants. And it allows people to, you know, young designers to learn and book time playing what I call playing with light. Having a light fixture in their hand, that's how they build a memory of how light works. And without that, you can't be a great lighting designer. You won't be able to stand with confidence in front of an architect and say that idea is going to work or not work unless you've spent the hours seeing how light works and memorizing that.
[00:31:27] Speaker B: Right. And having that space that speeds up that learning curve.
[00:31:31] Speaker D: Yeah, it's amazing our young designers that, you know, we hire a lot of designers right out of school, transferring from, you know, theater or other places, and we just try to get them into that space as much as possible. If you can spend an hour a day in a lighting lab with a light fixture in your hand, that is going to pay dividends in a year. There'll be so much further ahead.
[00:31:52] Speaker C: A mockup is the ultimate. Seeing is believing. Everything else is just talk and waving your hands in the air.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: Yeah, we talk a lot about how a rendering is great, but it's a projected image at your eye versus a light fixture that's projected onto that cove, onto that ceiling, onto that painting, onto that whatever. And we find that the mockup lets our brains and our customers brains and our clients brains connect the concept in the projected image to the reality. Because they're never the same, colors aren't the same. It's projected light in totally different ways too. Right. Idea projected in your eye versus seeing it reflecting off. Right. Like we all. Yeah, that touching it and feeling it is just so important. Right. We're, we're visual professionals. A flat projected image is not a visual. It is in a way, but it's not really the end result that you're looking for.
[00:32:51] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: That three dimensional experience I'm debating with myself whether to even talk about. We had just this morning a bad cove installation. So I was talking to the contractor again about what you have to do for a cove to work. You know, the shield and the fixture need to be level with one another, not higher, not lower.
And he came up with this idea and he was just sold on. If I add a floodlight to the back, that's gonna wash out the shadows of that line. I've got one in the car. I can bring it in and show you it was that confidence. I could stand there and tell them that's not going to work, but I knew that wouldn't show them as much as, you know, what. Yeah. Go out to your car and get that floodlight and put it up there. Let's look at it.
[00:33:36] Speaker D: Take a look.
[00:33:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm betting it's one of those Hubble gray things with a, you know, a half inch conduit connector. Let's give it a try. Let's see what it looks like.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: Let's see. Oh, wait, now it's too much of a. Yeah. Anyway, it was a good moment though. It's that seeing it, you know, seeing it, believing to see it.
[00:33:55] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:33:56] Speaker A: So we've talked about seeing it, believing it, we've talked about designing it. The other piece of the challenge we've found obviously in our professions, but also as we've talked in the podcast with people, is making it happen. And you guys have. On occasion, I think, Kenny, you correct me because I didn't know as much, but on occasion, you guys have a very unique methodology. Wonder if you go into that a.
[00:34:22] Speaker D: Little bit, I can sort of tee it up a little bit. Just, just to sort of, you guys should kind of understand sort of how we. We structure the company. So we've got 36 people working at Focus and we've got. About 22 of us are in what we're calling basically our design department and broken up into studios. And we split the projects among those studios and principals oversee it. But we are greatly assisted by our group, what we call the project managers, our project management group. And you know, they get involved in a number of things that help us out, as you mentioned, understanding pricing and trying to be. Help us budget projects and make sure we, we understand sort of where we're spending our money and where we're not. There are sort of go to experts on a lot of technical matters for lighting, so handling controls and drivers and making sure things are compatible. You know, one of the more valuable things is they teach us how to speak contractor or more specifically how do we, how, how do we have the point of view of the contractor and try to try to find and solve some of the problems. So you know, I tell Kenny all the time that I think our project management group is kind of our firm's secret weapon. And it's a huge benefit for us. But they also get involved in, as a lot of people know, the sale of lighting equipment. That is part of our business model as a kind of a supplemental extra service that sometimes gets provided, which is probably on 60% of our design jobs. But you know, we're a design firm first and we've sort of developed this other great supportive department that helps us make our life a little bit easier as designers.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: I can certainly see why you would want to do that because it's, it's such a struggle, the procurement side of getting what we specified onto our projects.
[00:36:21] Speaker D: Yeah. Imagine a world where you knew what your project was actually going to cost while you were designing it and there weren't any big surprises. You got a submittal, you weren't getting submittals that were really ridiculous, filled with fixtures that really aren't equal at all. So you're spending time reviewing them and testing them and convincing the owner about your notes. And you got someone on site for you making sure that things like the control system are perfectly set up the day you arrive so everything works and you can get in, get the place looking great and get back home. Like that's not the experience we often have when Kenny and our project managers aren't getting involved in our projects.
[00:37:05] Speaker C: Yeah. Just one example from this morning. A project manager went out to a job site in Utah to discover that the emergency transfer relays, there were 11 of them were doing load side transfer. The electrician didn't quite understand how to wire them up. Even though we literally pasted the wiring diagram on every single one, we still did that. We shipped them to ourselves, put the label on and then shipped it to the job site. And he instead he took the sense feed and he landed it on the dimmer. So that wasn't working so great. So thank goodness he had a trough so it, he didn't have to, you know, bend new conduit to fix it. But it's, you know, about a half a day or a day of work that Our lighting designer can't do his job. And who else would have been there to troubleshoot the problem? And the electrician, he made the problem. But I think the other thing to point out is that the project management side of it is a means to an end. And that end is primarily for. Not primarily exclusively to make our projects come out looking good. And making our projects look good doesn't begin with the work that the project managers do. It actually begins in the design process. Because one of the things that we do throughout the company, even though we talk about design versus project management, really our designers are very hands on and very technical. I mean, earlier today in a company meeting, we were talking about how tapelight is built and the circuiting within the traces of tapelight. And someone was asking me about forward voltages at the end of the meeting and what's the difference and the significance of that. And so, Avi, I think you do something similar where you draw your control systems. Yes.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: Right.
[00:38:58] Speaker C: Yeah, we do the same thing. And take that as an example. I don't know if you do or don't, Lisa, but I don't know how a lighting designer can't do that.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: It's amazing. We had Scott Rosenfeld on a couple weeks ago and he was talking about working with different lighting designers and some of the different institutions that he's worked in. And. And we got on the conversation that, yeah, I would say of he and I kind of came to the point, I think, Lisa, you agreed with me that of the lighting people who call themselves lighting designers, 90% of them don't design the control systems. I mean, at IALD in 2024, I went this year and I was at a table with a manufacturer who made color changing technology, not Lumen Pulse, our sponsor today.
[00:39:45] Speaker C: Thank you very much.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: But half of the people at the table were like, well, we don't specify controls. It's too complicated. And I just. I have to throw this out there. One of the people sitting at the table actually won an award that evening from iald, and I found it so amazing that you designed the light, but you didn't design how to turn it on and off.
[00:40:06] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: Let alone set a level to it. Right. Like, there's lighting designers that would argue that you don't need dimming. Right. You should have the right quantity of light from day one. I personally disagree with that. I can't figure a single environment that I wouldn't want. Some intensity modification even in an office. Cloudy day versus sunny day. Classic example.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: But if you didn't Design how it does that. You didn't do your job.
[00:40:32] Speaker D: We go as far as laying. I mean, basically we design everything from the control system all the way to the fixtures, all the way to the touch panel on the wall that the user touches. We lay out the 120 volt circuitry for almost all projects. We kind of got tired of reviewing drawings of the circuitry and correcting it. And we figured out it was actually just faster if we just laid it out ourselves. And I don't blame them. We are the, you know, we're the ones doing the design. It's hard for someone else to digest that and get it to come out right. And we think our jobs are, you know, not only are they designed and they're able to be built, but it's a really smart layout. We've seen many horror stories on controls and money needlessly spent. So we think and believe that it. It also saves our client a lot of. A lot of money trying to do that.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: You know, where Kenny and I connected most recently was at the Dall E Alliance. And, you know, for us, we. We basically use Dall E or dmx, so power doesn't matter. That's kind of the beautiful thing of those technologies. Go hook it up however you want. I don't care. Right. But the control side becomes really important. And, yeah, there is nobody else to lay that out or design it. And we talk about Dall E a lot. The biggest issue we have on our job sites with Dall E is loose wire nuts. And the crazy part of that is the electrician should be able to troubleshoot that, but they can't until we get on site and push the button that we showed them. Kenny, just like, you know, we showed them where the button is, we showed them how to test it. We showed them everything. But half of the rig doesn't work because there's a loose wire nut. I mean, it's. It's crazy that it comes down to that.
[00:42:12] Speaker C: And the fixture, of course, is. It get. Gets 90% of the blame, right?
[00:42:16] Speaker A: Oh, it's always a fixture, always a controls. It has nothing to do with that loose wiring. That's right. And it came too late, too. So sorry. We've already been open for six months, so we don't have time to fix that.
[00:42:29] Speaker C: It's definitely a thing. And part of it is. We consider. Part of designing the control system is designing the interface, or at least specifying a control system with an interface that is appropriate and good for our client. And what suits an office is not going to suit a restaurateur, perhaps, and every other type of project in between. And what I find is that when the lighting designer isn't specifying the controls, then it's the engineer, but really it's the engineer calling their favorite rep, whichever one it is. And that's the control system that they get. They're not the ones drawing it, it's the manufacturer or the rep drawing it for them. And so they're, you know, knowledgeable about the functionality and the capabilities. But when you ask them about the programming side, they don't know. And in all fairness, they probably haven't had a conversation with the owner operator anyway.
[00:43:35] Speaker D: Kind of our point of view on controls is after we leave the job site as a lighting designer, it doesn't matter how much they loved us, love the design, think it's great. The interface between them as an operator or an owner and our lighting design is that control system. So it better be intuitive, it better be working the way they expect it, because if it's not, they're going to get a little bit more annoyed each and every time they hit that button and it doesn't do what they expect it to do. So it's, you know, that's. Control systems is one of the things that's on our sort of list of things that we have to make sure is perfected before we leave the site because we just know that that's, that's super important.
[00:44:16] Speaker C: They always want it to be simple. And getting it to simple is very complicated.
[00:44:20] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:44:22] Speaker B: I've been quiet, but you got to where, where I am, that you got to my reality. Kenny, We've. We try to get the control system designed on our projects and we get it sometimes, but a lot of times the engineers don't want to give it up because they're charging a lot of money to design that. And then they're doing exactly what you just said, calling a rep. So they're getting paid to call the rep and have some. Someone else design it anyway.
I'd love to get all of you your insight. I mean, it sounds like you just demand like we have to do it. That's just part of it. We're designing all of, you know, we end up doing all of the control intent, the zoning, the location of the interface we're designing, doing all of that, everything but specifying the system, because we didn't get that into our scope.
[00:45:14] Speaker D: Sometimes we figured out that we were actually spending more time when it wasn't in our scope. And so even if we can't add it to our contract. We just do it because it actually saves us time. And when we approach it like that, the engineer is happy to let it off because they're gonna. They might be getting paid for it, they might not, but they'll let you do it. They still have to review it and approve it, but that's an easier task.
[00:45:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's interesting.
[00:45:37] Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting. I had a conversation earlier this week with somebody talking about kind of what you're talking about, Brett. Right. There's things that are in your contract and in your scope, but sometimes you just have to do things because it's right for the project or it's right for you because it's going to take less time. Right. So when we're not selling the products, right. When we're not doing our acquisition services, that extra time it takes to manage procurement, manage ve. Manage pricing issues. Right. You could go to the bank and say, hey, you know, this is all extra services and they're just going to walk away. Right. Or you can just do it because you'll sleep better at night even if the owner doesn't listen to you in the end. Right. I'm sure we've all had that situation where the contractor knows better than any of us do. You can at least sleep better at night because you did everything you possibly could to say you're wrong, you're getting robbed. If you want to just be robbed, go ahead. But there's a better path.
[00:46:36] Speaker D: It's cumulative. It's not just the time spent doing the layout of the control system while we're documenting it. There's time saved at the end. The end of the job is uber important for us. We're pretty much every single job we are there doing and aiming and setting light levels to sort of fine tune everything on the lighting system. And that always happens at the very end, later than it should with not enough time available before opening of the project. Right. So you're always crunched for time. And if you get there and the control system's not working correctly and not doing what you intended it to do, not only is your time going to be wasted, the project's not going to look good, and so it's just an investment that sounds like a lot at the day you're actually doing the work, but it saves so much time over the course and guarantees success better. So it's an investment that's worth it from. From our perspective.
[00:47:26] Speaker A: And Kenny, you and I were talking a little bit about the other piece of that too is that you own all the issues associated with those products. Do you want to expand upon that and talk a little about that? Because I think that's a really important point for people to who are thinking about selling products as part of their design to understand that other element.
[00:47:47] Speaker C: If on the one side you designed it and then on the opposite end you're supplying it, then you are the person that they're going to turn to, rightly or wrongly, whenever there's an issue, whenever there's a problem, nevermind the electrician and his wiring, right, Everyone is going to come to you. Furthermore, because you've done this thing that's a little bit unusual and said I'm going to own the design and the supply, what we have found is everyone who accepts the notion that we're going to do this and seize the benefit of it will still hold us to a higher standard than they would any individual who does it. So if you had a mistake on your drawing Avi and you overloaded a dimmer, or you didn't show a light fixture, or you missed a power, or you had too few power supplies, you know, I'm sure you feel badly about it, but they don't come asking you to buy them an extra power supply. If we do that, and if we missed it on our drawing and our project manager didn't catch it in their review of the drawings, then that's on us. If we're going to do this, we have to own it. Soup to nuts. And over the years, one of the things that characterizes us both design and on the PM side is a lot of specifiers that we see kind of have to run away from the complicated thing, whether it's a control system or whatever, because it just becomes, it takes up too much time and the fee isn't there to support the exploration or the problem solving or the whatever. And distributors will do the same thing. They will run away from the problem and from the difficult and try and pass that off as much as they can to the rep or to the manufacturer. Whether or not the rep or the manufacturer deserves it. We're the ones running into the fire when everyone else is running out. We embrace and enjoy the difficult. And many times when we are looking to supply a job, I will say to a client, would it be just okay? Would it be okay if we just supply you our part? Because the back of House 2 by twos, which are really easy, I'm actually not as good at that. And even if I were as good, the value isn't, you Know, I can't offer value for a 2 by 2, but I sure as heck can offer value for a Lumen Pulse RGB linear fixture. There you go, Avi.
[00:50:20] Speaker A: All right, there we go. Thank you, Lumen Pulse.
[00:50:23] Speaker C: Thank you, Lumen Pulse.
[00:50:25] Speaker D: I mean, I think it's really important to share some of those kind of cautionary tales when it comes to getting involved in supply and procurement. As a designer, we've learned so many lessons over 38 years. And you know, I think as much as we're appreciative of the changes that have happened at the ild, I think we're also a bit worried, you know, a little bit for our profession in that if people start thinking that this is an easy thing to jump into, it's not. We probably make it look a little easier than it, than it really is. And it's risky and sometimes expensive venture. And you know, we just, we want to make sure people are aware of that too. And because what we don't want to see is people jumping in and getting hurt because it is possible, there's, there's a lot of risk.
[00:51:16] Speaker A: I always share with people a story I heard a linear tape like company told me this story that they ship custom product out to Las Vegas and it didn't show up. And in the process of learning about that, what they were explaining to me is the moment a product crosses the threshold onto a truck from any factory, they wash their hands of it. It's done, it's gone, we shipped it, we're done. Now falls on the shipping company. If you think about tape, light, linear tape, light product, it doesn't weigh anything except the drivers, but it's all custom made. And most of those shipping companies are based, are insured based on weight. So this product, the weight and the, the credit for the lost thing was somewhere in the order of, you know, making up numbers here, like thousand dollars was $100,000 worth of product. This is gone. And so you know, who's responsible for that? Well, the distributor ultimately, because they picked the freight company. Freight company is only responsible for it because, well, up to the, the weight of the product. And then ultimately the manufacturer is like, well, I shipped it, so I'm done. But now you got people waiting on site for it. So what's going to happen? The manufacturer is probably going to make it again. They're going to send another bill. Somebody's going to have to eat that bill. The owner's not going to pay for it. Right. It's just, it's this, as you were Saying, Brett, that's like one little tiny part of the big picture of this piece of owning the, the sale of the product. That really needs to be cautious. And you guys probably, you know, 30, 30 some odd years doing it. It's probably thousands of stories.
[00:52:57] Speaker D: On top of that, most distributors are. A big part of their job is being what a lot of people would call the bank. They're the financial buffer between the project and the manufacturers. And that's a difficult and expensive and risky place to, to be. We were somewhat lucky when this first came up. I actually don't know if you know the, how this all began for us. We were actually, we were doing work. Remember plant Hollywoods?
[00:53:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:24] Speaker D: Way back in the day. We designed almost all the plant Hollywoods around the world back in the late 90s. And we started in the first few cities and, you know, very theatrical design, both for the, for the interior design and for the lighting. And things would change at the last minute. And so you go into a city and the sort of scenic piece on the wall would move 10ft and we'd have to change it from a track fixture to a recess fixture. And the local supplier would hit Planet Hollywood with a huge change order. And, you know, we'd move to the next city and there'd be no sort of institutional knowledge built up with a new set of contractors. And it just was a mess for the first three locations. And Planet Hollywood finally went to Paul and said, hey, this is, this is not going well. We're spending tons of money. Can you just help us with, with the buying the equipment? And Paul was like, I, yeah, I, I guess we can do that. And luckily he's, you know, he was a theatrical designer, but after that he was one of the co founders of Light Lab. And so he had a very strong amount of experience in manufacturing and not only design and kind of everything in between. So he came to the situation with a ton of knowledge about how the market worked and was able to pass that on to Kenny and me and all, all of us, and help us develop those, those systems. We have a lot of lessons. Like you say, we've learned a lot of things the hard way over the years and it's, it's not easy. It definitely makes the job better and it takes some of the pressure that I'm sure most design firms feel from a time perspective. It does allow us to, if we need to go beyond on our, our fee dollars to make a job come out right, we have a little flexibility to do that. But it's not Easy.
[00:55:20] Speaker C: And if he weren't the type of guy who built his own, you know, built his own company, built his own fixtures at one point with that company. At the time, they were also doing control systems.
[00:55:30] Speaker A: Right.
[00:55:31] Speaker C: All that nightclub controls they were doing at the same time. He was handling distribution for low voltage transformers back in the day. And so he was familiar with all of that. If he wasn't also the kid who was going to the science fairs in high school, he was all those things. And without all of that, I don't think he ever could have or would have said yes to Planet Hollywood. And without all of that, I don't think we ever could, ever would have built this part of our business.
[00:56:04] Speaker B: Do you have any other final, like, words of caution, lessons learned, any other story you would want people to know?
[00:56:12] Speaker D: For me, certainly the supply side of our business is important. Where I live and where I think pretty much everyone in our company lives. It's a love of light. And you know what I tell all of our young designers is pick up a fixture every single day. Don't let a day go by without having a fixture in your hand and playing with light. First of all, it's fun. You learn a ton, and that's the way you become a great lighting designer. So just. Just make time for it every single day.
[00:56:40] Speaker C: And to all the lighting designers who are considering entering into this part of the business, I would say your motivation has to be in the right place. It has to be. It should be. It's wrong if it's about anything other than making a great design come to life and getting the right result and the right value for your client. I often tell people, you know, we don't sell light fixtures because it's a fun and exciting business to be in, profitable and right. And I told Brett a long time ago, I said, you know, because I came from design and I came to this design firm and turned out the job that they were considering me for was this thing which was. I was like, what is this? And after I took it, I said to Brett that I can get behind the idea of doing all this to make these other people's designs come out right. It was very much in line with what I had done, either as an associate designer or as a production electrician. I got it, and I knew I liked that sort of thing. But I also told Brett that if ever I felt like a salesman and just a guy selling light fixtures, I was out. I was gone. And that was 18 years later. And I have no intention of leaving.
[00:57:55] Speaker A: I love That I have one other parting question. Brett, you touched on it. You going to join? I ALD now.
[00:58:03] Speaker D: It's hard to give up a grudge.
[00:58:05] Speaker A: But I know, I know all too well.
[00:58:09] Speaker D: Well, we probably will. Like I said, we do appreciate the changes that are happening in ild and you know, we've, we've been involved in, even though we couldn't be members, we've been involved in terms of, you know, Paul was one of the founders with Chip Israel on the ILD Education Trust Fund for years and years raising money. And of course we always submitted projects to be judged and it would be nice to also be a member. So, yeah, we're, we're looking forward to that.
[00:58:34] Speaker A: How about you, Kenny?
[00:58:36] Speaker C: I'll mute myself and then tell you my answer.
[00:58:41] Speaker D: Paul told us as we get older, it's. It's easier to give up a grudge. So he's totally on board.
[00:58:47] Speaker C: I yelled at Paul for not having a grudge and he was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't have a grudge. Okay, joking aside. Now if the intention was to bring the designers who were already doing the supply side and bring them into the fold, and that is fantastic and overdue and remove that stigma that we're somehow second class citizens. So I'm excited about that. Obviously, if the goal, however, was to make it okay for existing IALD members to open up a new department and create a new revenue stream for themselves, then I go back to what we said earlier where I say I worry about a lot of practices because distribution is different than design. And distribution the way we believe it would or should be done by someone who is also the designer is very different from design, and you will be held to that higher standard and have that responsibility. And it's not something you get overnight.
[01:00:09] Speaker B: I think that's great advice. And I can't speak for the iald, but at least what I was told was the intention was to increase membership. So the former.
[01:00:20] Speaker C: Right. I've already had a conversation, you know, conversations with some designers who are members and saw an opportunity and then, you know, wanted me to show them the playbook, so to speak. And that's what I say. And if the ILD said you could sell faucets, doesn't mean you know how to sell faucets.
[01:00:40] Speaker A: Yeah. I also can't speak for the ild, but I do believe that it is our. It is a. The lighting design professions only architectural lighting design professions only trade organization.
And we as a group of lighting designers need that place that screams from the tower lighting matters. This is why. And this is these group of professionals that do amazing work and again, I can say this as myself and do these typical scope of works just like an architect. Right. So they design the lighting controls, they design the light fixtures, they do calculations, they do blah, blah, blah. Right. Just like an architect does. But does it as an organization because right now Avi Moore is doing that and Brett and Kenny are doing that and Lisa's doing that and, and, and we're all doing it the same way with slightly different language because that's our brand specific thing. But if we had an organization that helped us with better language so we could all use closer language and then sell our brand specific methodologies for that language, we'd stop selling against not using a lighting designer and we would start selling Kenny. Going down the selling side but selling our design services as a design profession that's recognized in this industry. And so, you know, I really hope and, and Lisa and I and a few other people and honestly, Brett and Kenny, I would love to include you guys once you become members of this organization. We are working towards trying to push that and advocacy. Advocacy portion of ild. I haven't beat around the bush on this. I feel like it is the priority for us as lighting designers. And it's again, it's beyond what more Lights or Focus or RBLD can do as individual companies, but we can do as a whole. And we've been great competitors with one another. Much more on your side than mine.
But it doesn't matter to me because there's a lighting designer doing the job and if we all can use that similar language and we can be a, a group together, this is just going to get better and we're going to get back to those kids coming out of theater and learning about us and it's all going to be a little bit better. And whether you sell it or not, that's, that's for your business and your discussion to be had. But the design that, that you guys bring to the table, you know, Brett and Kenny like the designs that you, you all do is bar none. It's gorgeous. It's, it's beautiful work. Yes. And it is lighting design at its finest.
[01:03:37] Speaker B: Absolutely. I wanted to get to that point too. Somebody said something about second class citizens, but I've had nothing but admiration and respect for Paul and for Focus my entire career. You guys are amazing.
[01:03:50] Speaker D: Yeah. We appreciate the kind words and we fully respect you guys and we look forward to a future where we can all be Iald members and hanging out at the bar at the, at the conference.
[01:04:02] Speaker A: I mean that's really all the conference is really about. You know, drinking at the bar at.
[01:04:07] Speaker C: Some hotel where you don't get points. I think I heard you say.
[01:04:09] Speaker A: Yeah, no points. And. And it's like crazy uber ride to it too.
[01:04:16] Speaker B: Well, at one point we said the Lighting Matters podcast was really just to broadcast those conversations that are happening at those conferences. So I think we've done that today.
[01:04:27] Speaker D: Excellent.
[01:04:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Brett and Kenny, thank you for taking some time out of your busy days to join us. We do have a sponsor today and I'm going to attempt to read their language here. You're familiar with Lumen Pulse's expertise in crafting top tier exterior luminaires for bridges, buildings and public plazas, while they've also been bringing that same. I don't know, I like that's.
[01:04:53] Speaker C: Sorry.
[01:04:55] Speaker A: That same proven design excellence to interior light solutions with lighting designers. I will add that if you're looking for interior architectural light fixture that delivers outstanding performance and unmatched versatility, Lumen Pulse's Lumen Core family might be the answer. From dynamic color changing to high performance dynamic white point sources to linear cove grazing fixtures, they're transforming interior lighting experiences with the use of lighting designers. I need to add the language, I apologize, but great products gotta include the lighting designer part of this thing and great people.
[01:05:36] Speaker C: And I know a lot of different people there even in back in the factory. Product managers, designers, engineers, salespeople. They're all kind, helpful, smart people, let's say.
[01:05:48] Speaker A: I got one more paragraph here. Let's explore OptiWhite plus or OptiWhite Color Tua Lumen Pulse's advanced technologies within the Lumen Core collection, OptiWhite plus delivers consistent full spectrum white light with smooth color temperature transitions, while opticolor enables dynamic RGBW color control, allowing for vibrant, customizable lighting to fit any space the lighting designer can dream of.
[01:06:18] Speaker B: For flawless, flawless recessed wall lighting, look to the new Lumen Core Invisio Wall Wash, which ensures smooth, even illumination across the entire surface, eradicating scalloping and offering industry leading on center spacing. Say goodbye to uneven lighting and hello to impeccable wall coverage every time. What makes Lumen Core stand out is its flexibility. Whether you're after precise downlighting with recessed or cylinder fixtures or stunning linear solutions for cove and grazing applications, Lumen Core adapts to your vision by offering field changeable accessories and optics.
[01:06:59] Speaker C: Yay.
[01:06:59] Speaker B: Plus with over 15 control options, including Dolly and 0.1% dimming and DMX, you have full control at your fingertips. Stay tuned for even more exciting products as you'll be hearing more from Opticolor plus throughout the Lumencore collection and elsewhere. With Lumen Core, you're not just illuminating a space, you're bringing your creative vision to life. Ready to take your design to the next level? Visit the Lumen Pulse website today and explore the endless possibilities of Lumen Core.
[01:07:32] Speaker D: Thank you Lumenpulse and thank you Lisa and Avi.
[01:07:36] Speaker C: Thank you both.
[01:07:37] Speaker B: Thank you too.
Lighting Matters as we wrap up, we want to reiterate how much we value your time, and we hope you found it as much fun to listen to as we had creating it. Remember to like it and share this content with your friends and colleagues.
[01:07:54] Speaker A: The opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the sponsors. Our content has general application, but we recommend obtaining personalized guidance from a professional IALD lighting designer such as RBLD or morelights for your next endeavor.
