Martin Valentine, the new Head of Lighting for the Specialist Lighting Department at FaberMaunsell, laments the lighting design community's art of complaining, the prejudices and the ulterior motives. You know who you are...

It's interesting to read the various articles that crop up in our incestuous lighting design community. Do we ever write anything when we are happy? It seems hardly ever. Most of the time articles fall into two areas: Complaining about something is the most popular; this could be a new guidance document, a problematic lamp, dubious work practice or some aspect of our business (other than their own of course). There's nothing particularly wrong with this, it's often how we get subjects out into the open. But whilst it's very easy to spot a mistake and moan about what is wrong with something, it's quite another to stick one's neck out and offer an alternative. If more research was undertaken resulting in a considered and balanced solution offered more often, it would be a breath of fresh air.

The other types of articles are a far happier bunch and tend to showcase exhibitions, awards, lighting schemes, proposals and the like. But we must be wary of staying too safe with these and it would arguably be more enlightening to have a greater degree of self-criticism and regular analysis of the design process and schemes. There is often a tendency to simply scratch the surface of completed lighting schemes and blow one's own or another's trumpet. Worse still are the page-filling sections one comes across, offering design advice based on what could only be called the "bleeding obvious" school of lighting.

If we all opened up to a greater degree and became more transparent, then we would certainly understand far more about ourselves, our practices and lighting itself. Possibly it is this lack of transparency that has helped to maintain a level of ignorance and prejudice amongst some lighting designers. Not just towards other disciplines, but between ourselves.

The subject of misplaced preconceptions and prejudices is one I feel particularly experienced to bring up, as in my time I've been tarred with many of the common brushes. It is true to say that most of us fall into lighting and I am no different. My background is unashamedly commercial and I rose through the ranks of a consulting engineering practice, including a brief dalliance as a CAD manager. This led, in my case, to an attraction for purely lighting design and I evolved into a so-called 'Lighting Principal' within the consultancy. There then followed a couple of years at an independent lighting-design specialist, Cannon-Brookes Lighting, concentrating predominantly in museum, gallery and domestic lighting. Recently I have moved to FaberMaunsell to head the specialist lighting group for this international multi-disciplinary company.

Throughout the years I've been amused at how the various members of the design team can often typecast each other before they have even met. When it came to being the lighting designer things were no different. As a representative of an engineering practice I was already pre-judged to have no understanding of architecture and interior design, utterly devoid of flair, completely obsessed with fluorescent lamps and a danger that I might bore the Client. Later, when sitting down at similar meetings as a specialist "independent" lighting designer it was assumed, it seemed, that I had no common sense, no concept of programme, the instant potential to cripple everyone's budget, no concept of electricity and wiring, no common sense and no common sense. If one knows their field, it obviously doesn't take too long to gain the confidence of colleagues and design teams alike, but meeting a line of folded arms does become tiresome. As our profession grows, our role and importance in the design process is becoming more appreciated. With experience we too understand and appreciate the others' roles in the process.

The problem is now that the past prejudices within the design team seem to have been replaced by similar misplaced prejudices flying about amongst ourselves. What on earth makes a lighting designer working for a practice with a multidisciplinary parent company any less creative than one working within an independent practice? Yet I hear all sorts of sarcastic comments from both camps. Possibly it just comes down to the name of the practice attached? It is the individuals and the ideas they generate which is important and if they work in an environment surrounded with experience and varied backgrounds, all the better. The proof is in the ideas and schemes produced, so let's see more of those presented openly in articles.

I know designers working in every field of lighting design whom I have the greatest of respect for. Some of the most talented individuals work within the manufacturing world, but it's not vogue to air that opinion. Quite a few heads of today's lighting design companies started life working for manufacturers and who's to say in the future that more good designers might not move the other way? But why do we generalise and make such rash judgments and in any case why is there still so much bitchiness out there? It seems to be getting worse. Surely we are all not going to become as hierarchical and separatist as the architectural world!

The latest tirade we've been subjected to is the use of letters pages to rant about which other magazine or lighting body is better than another!? But there always seems to be an ulterior motive behind these and the individuals don't do themselves any favours. So come on ladies and gentlemen, count to ten, lets keep those egos and agendas in check and lets just get along in lighting.

Correspondence concerning this column and its contents is welcomed. Please email comments to p.james@mondiale.co.uk. This will then be considered for publication in mondo*arc.