Advocacy has become one of the defining conversations in the lighting industry. As those conversations continue, I’ve found myself wondering what we’re missing in our collective mindset. Advocacy depends on effective communication. Being adept at choosing words, visuals, and experiences that resonate with others and inspire purposeful action is as much an art as it is a skill. If we want more people to understand the value of quality lighting, perhaps we should spend more time studying how people understand anything at all.
We are all ambassadors of our profession. If communication is a skill—and not simply a personality trait—then it deserves the same deliberate practice we give calculations, specifications, standards, and every other technical discipline we value. The question isn’t whether these subjects are “lighting.” The question is whether they make us more effective at helping people understand light.
The lighting industry advocates for two simple ideas: Invest in quality lighting because people matter and hire a lighting professional who knows how to do that. Neither task is easy to achieve, but both are worth pursuing. Much of the expectation in our community is that the responsibility of advocacy lies within the structure and mission of organizations like the IES, IALD, ALA, NLB, and many more. However, each organization has the same two paths of advocacy: connecting knowledgeable people with meaningful work, and creating spaces where lighting genuinely serves the needs of the people who use them.
These organizations, and the broader lighting industry, don’t own communication, design, psychology, or learning. Thus, we should borrow from everyone, including the following perspectives.
Information Design and User Interface Design: Learning how to organize information, establish visual hierarchy, edit for clarity, and communicate with intention. We often design around what we know, instead of how someone else absorbs new information. Challenging assumptions with evidence instead of instinct can create presentations, documents, and even lighting controls that are easier to use, and ultimately, more equitable.
Writing: Every profession writes. Physicians document care. Lawyers build arguments. Artists explain ideas. Better writing isn’t always an effort of liability avoidance. It builds trust, empathy, and collaboration. It is as valuable as technical accuracy.
Art: Humans are moved by art. A strong reaction in either direction of love or hate will inevitably lead toward a discussion about color, texture, composition, and symbolism. I studied fine art before lighting, and it taught me how to communicate observations before I learned to communicate intent. As a community, the lighting industry could improve observation and reflection and use it as an opportunity to connect with others about light. Imagine inviting artists, curators, and museum professionals into our conferences to learn from them, not teach them.
The Senses: Like focusing on a single food group while planning a meal, we’ve missed a few things about the parallel paths other disciplines take to influence behavior and experience. Lighting influences safety, navigation, comfort, and enjoyment but never in isolation. Have you considered the relationship between light and sound, smell, taste, and/or touch? Imagine blaring music in a low-lit enviroment or putting an ice cube on your tongue in an environment drenched in red light. Our work exists within a larger sensory experience, and I suspect there are many parallel discussions occurring with experts who study our senses.
Geography and Ecology: The role of lighting in nostalgia may be an interesting thread to pull on to better communication skills. Childhood memories of sunsets, shadows, darkness, and daylight are shaped by where we live. Can we see the horizon? Do we mostly experience light as it interacts with dense buildings and man-made materials? How tall are the trees for shade? Have we seen reflection and refraction on water our whole lives? Someone raised in the desert may experience visual conditions entirely differently than someone raised in the mountains; each have a foundation that influences their relationship to light and color. That history shapes how people experience light long before they have the vocabulary to describe it.
None of these observations are intended as criticism of our profession’s enthusiasm for technology. That curiosity has advanced lighting in extraordinary ways. Rather, these observations are an invitation to widen the conversation. We often pursue greater technical depth—and we should—but there are neighboring disciplines that can make us better advocates, educators, designers, and collaborators. We often ask architects, interior designers, landscape architects, engineers, facility managers, and the public to appreciate the value of lighting expertise. How often do we invest the same curiosity in their expertise?
Further Exploration
The reading recommendations below may seem unrelated to lighting, and that’s precisely why I recommend them. Each explores how people learn, communicate, adapt, create meaning, or make decisions. Read through the lens of lighting, they become books about advocacy and communication:
- Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross
- Find Out Anything From Anyone, Anytime by James O. Pyle and Maryann Karinch
- The Adaptation Advantage: Let Go, Learn Fast, and Thrive in the Future of Work by Heather E. McGowan and Chris Shipley
- Design for How People Learn by Julie Dirksen
- Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel
- Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear by Dr. Frank Luntz
- The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton
- The Senses: Design Beyond Vision by Ellen Lupton and Andrea Lipps.
Some of these books explore how individuals and groups embrace new ideas or adapt to change. Others simply made me reflect on how we can grow closer to the people we’re trying to help.
Our profession sometimes becomes preoccupied by creating more distance to illustrate expertise. We say “luminaire” and cringe at “light fixture”; we use “lamp” instead of “light bulb.” Precision absolutely matters when we’re writing standards and codes as well as in developing test methods or producing technical documentation. Shared vocabulary here keeps us a strong, accuracy-seeking community. However, public conversations are different. If someone walks into a store looking for a new “light bulb” for their table “lamp,” we don’t need to correct them. We know what they mean. It is our job to translate.
One of the best examples of communication in our industry wasn’t written by lighting professionals—it borrowed from nutrition labels. The Federal Trade Commission Lighting Facts labels work for communication and visual information arrangement because they are familiar. Nutrition Facts labels are in every single home. Their design is empathetic because they communicate through a format people already understand.
Communication Earns Trust
Like any profession, we sometimes become preoccupied with serving ourselves instead of the people we’re ultimately trying to reach. That’s understandable—but advocacy asks us to reverse that perspective. Clear communication isn’t the opposite of sophisticated thinking. It’s often the first step toward it. If educational material feels oversimplified, it may mean you aren’t its intended audience.
Every recommendation we make begins with another human being trying to understand something unfamiliar. Every standard, design narrative, client presentation, and public conversation asks someone to trust our expertise before they fully understand it. Communication earns that trust. Ultimately, advocacy isn’t measured by how much we know. It’s measured by what other people understand well enough to do differently.