Celebrating the Digital Native Generation of Lighting Designers

Millennials, the digital native generation is self-interested, lazy, and entitled.

Those are just a few of the terms we hear nowadays regarding younger people. These are the people who are the future of lighting design and who make up a large percentage of today’s workforce. They are also not so young anymore as many millennials will turn 36 this year. What we don’t hear enough about is that they are also a generation that has strong values, dedicated purpose, a faultless work ethic and vast curiosity, all fuelled by the digital revolution and new technologies.

Burdened with these false preconceptions, the rising costs of living, and an ever more competitive marketplace, these new lighting designers need all the support they can get to shake off the stigmas and break out into the market to prove their worth.

ERCO, the international architectural lighting specialist, realised the need for a ‘springboard’ and, as a result, has designed the Spot-on program, dedicated to elevating new and exciting lighting designers. It aims to share the selected projects across the media, and give them a tool-kit of professional copy and images for further PR work.

The thinking behind the program is to enable good light as a whole to be celebrated, discover, shared and promoted.  To go beyond the norms of conventional lighting promotion and to showcase the value, importance and impact of good, creative lighting design. The program hopes to see the new work from the first wave of digital native designers with ERCO wanting to explore how the new generation of young lighting designers work, communicate, harness technologies, and most of all, apply light in everyday life.

Big does not always mean better, and the scale of the project is not a factor when entering Spot-on. More often than not the larger projects naturally attract press and media attention.  Spot-on is a chance for the smaller, detailed and individually unique projects to be recognised in the media and to have the tools to compete on the large global lighting design stage.

Creativity is key: The Spot-on program welcomes the most beautiful, inspiring and intelligent use of light.  There is no limit to the ambition of young designers. To be as open and accessible as possible the project has very few barriers for entry, projects that enter should just include some of the ERCO products in them.

Whether it’s a final university project or a project delivered by a collective, a new start-up practice or a talented individual, the Spot-on program is designed to act as an enabler, giving young lighting designers the chance to shine.

For more information about Spot-on and to see how to enter your projects you can go to www.erco.com/spot-on

Enter your project from 15 January 2019.