We’re kicking off 2021 with inspirational lighting designs to help ‘spark’ your imagination! Perhaps the most ‘lit’ amongst the A’ Design Award’s multiple categories, this list looks at winning designs from the past year, celebrating good design from the year gone by. The Italy-based A’ Design Awards and Competition have always tried to be more than an award, by creating a multi-disciplinary program that rewards designers while also creating an environment that helps designers grow their products as well as careers… And yes, you also win a shiny trophy. We look at the top Lighting Designs from last year, creating a compilation of what A’ Design’s stellar 218-member international jury panel deemed worthy of winning the A’ Design Award. While we’re at it, do check out what Winning an Award does for your Design Career, and don’t forget to head down to the A’ Design Award and Competition page to register to submit your design entries for the Award. The last date of submission is February 28th, 2021 and the awards will be announced here on YD on April 15th! Register to participate in the A’ Design Awards now! Hurry, with the final date just 3 weeks away… You still have time to grab yourself an A’ Design Award and make 2021 YOUR year! Inspired by the shape of the Mobius strip, this lamp transforms the 2D strip-design into a 3D form, creating a bending path of light that looks interesting while illuminating a larger area. While Mobius Strips are known to have a single, continuous surface, the Mobius Lamp sacrifices that detail in an effort to create something arguably more interesting. The 3D lamp has a single illuminating surface that twists around wooden veneers, creating something that looks impressive even when it’s switched off! Pluto was inspired by telescopes, which use tripods and dynamic but stable forms… however, instead of having a lamp focusing upward and outward (like telescopes), Pluto shines downward, focusing on the earth in general, and your table, specifically. Designed by Heitor Lobo Campos for 3D-printing lighting company Gantri, Pluto’s form is simple and sensible. A cylindrical lamp rests on 3 legs, giving it a small, stable footprint, while a circular ring that extends around the top works as a handle, allowing you to lift the lamp to move it around, while also sort of making it look like a planet with rings around it. Maybe the lamp should have been called Saturn, eh?! Your eyes aren’t deceiving you! This is an example of how a single source of inspiration can lead to two incredible (and award-winning) designs! This Mobius Lamp by Nhi Ton uses a pleated paper design to create a visually interesting light source. Unlike the previous Mobius lamp, this one isn’t a stiff, solid design. The paper construction means the lamp can be played with, twisted, pulled, compressed, and manipulated in all directions. Aside from looking visually exquisite, the lamp also introduces a tactile element, which means you don’t just appreciate the lamp with your eyes, you do so with your hands too! The Fragrance lamp too, is a multisensorial lamp that targets the visual, tactile, as well as the olfactory senses! Perhaps the first lamp I’ve heard of that also was designed to be smelled, the Fragrance Lamp’s shade uses a combination of dried lavender seeds, buds, and a wooden paste to create something that has the texture and consistency of papier-mache, with the aroma of natural essential oils. If dried and preserved correctly, the lamp will never lose its fragrance. Touch it for texture, smell it for perfume, and switch it on to illuminate spaces… the Fragrance Lamp does things not many lamps are capable of doing! The name hints at the product’s source of inspiration! Designed to mimic the act of picking a fruit off a tree, the Frutta lamp is an orb-shaped lighting device with an ecosystem of lamp-stands that range from a floor-standing ‘tree’, to a tabletop ‘shrub’, to a fruit tray! The lamp can be mounted (and charged) on any of these stands, and the purpose of the stand is to really drive home the story behind the product while the interaction of ‘plucking’ the fruit reinforces this award-winning lamp’s powerful story! The Oplamp has three different avatars within the same body! Its strange shape (reminds me of the Wacom logo) features three intersecting hollow cones, with a lamp at the center. Place the Oplamp any way you want by resting it on any of the three surfaces and the remaining two cones point the light in different directions. The three differently shaped and angled cones allow the light to point in a variety of directions, depending on which cone you use as the base. It’s a clever little trick that allows the Oplamp to be an ambient light, an accent light, or even a table-lamp! Minimal, contemporary, flexible – these three words perfectly capture the Poise lamp’s features and its inherent appeal. The adjustable table-lamp has a unique halo-shaped light mounted on a vertical channel that rests on the lamp’s base. With a total of 3 swivel joints at the top and the bottom of the vertical channel, the Poise can be rotated up to 320 degrees and be adjusted in multiple ways, creating a unique combination of geometric forms each time! The Wave Lamp isn’t so much about the light itself as it is about how the light reacts to the lamp’s frilly surface. Created using multiple wavy plastic elements, the floor lamp has almost a coral chandelier quality to it. The lamp has a visual duality. When lit, the waves that reflect the light create a suggestive chiaroscuro effect giving the lamp a visual perception of depth which changes depending upon the viewing angle. The light beam sways thanks to the wavy rings of the lamp creating evocative shadows. When switched off, the lamp appears more dense and sculptural. Designed with a dual purpose, the geometric Dorian Lamp comes with a slim metal frame that has an independently rotating disc within it. On one side of the disc is a mirror, while the other is a lamp. Marcello Colli calls the Dorian’s frame and use of geometry essentialist, not minimalist. It’s a way of understanding that every part of the lamp plays an essential role, be it the frame, which holds the main unit aloft, or the rotating disc, which serves as illumination when you need it to, and reflection when you want it to. Easily the most unusual entry in this design round-up, the E Drum also echoes the philosophy of multi-sensorial design. Can light be heard? Surely not, right? But what if I reframe the question… how much of the experience of a musical concert is JUST in the listening? Light plays an incredibly important role in bringing music concerts to life, which is why there’s a euphoria associated with seeing your favorite artist perform on a stage versus listening to them on Spotify. E Drum was created to give the audience an extraordinary experience they had never seen before. Every aspect of the drummer’s performance was re-engineered simply to make it more visual, more dramatic. From the 360° layout (which is designed in a way to make the drums at the back visible too), to the fact that each drum is ring-lit, the E Drum is an audiovisual treat. Moreover, when the drummer hits the beat, it sends a MIDI signal to the light around the drum, creating almost a Guitar Hero-ish experience in real life, where the light dances to the beat of the drums! Register Here for the A’ Design Awards and Competition 2020-2021: Deadline 28th February 2021