What are the main trends shaping lighting design, and why has it become central to contemporary products?
Has lighting become the hottest ticket in automotive design? It can’t be far off. Each new launch seems to lean increasingly heavily on lighting to separate models and brands from one another, not only outside but inside the cabin too.
Technological breakthroughs have elevated lighting’s position as a tool for design and brand identification. Or in plain parlance: it’s all about creating fancy light signatures. However, this may be a little reductive, as lamps are now being employed not only to illuminate but also to communicate in new ways. Not just turn signals, but displaying the driver’s (or car’s) intentions while driving. It can also be used as a tool for entertainment, perhaps creating goalposts on a wall or laying out a grid for children to play hop-scotch. The opportunities, it seems, are boundless.
Based in Paris, Paul-Henri Matha is the founder of Driving Vision News but before that spent a fair stint in the industry as a lighting expert both across broader organisations but also embedded directly with OEMs like Volvo Cars, Renault Groupe and the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance. He has seen plenty change during his time as a self-professed “lighting design addict” and, for our May focus on lighting, gave CDN a top-line overview of what’s happening in this space.
Car Design News: What are the key issues dictating how lighting designers work?
Paul-Henri Matha: I see…
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