ELDC is your one-stop online shop for lighting design. Whether equipping an office, art gallery or upmarket bachelor pad, ELDC has lighting fixtures that will have an employee, art enthusiast or bachelor pal coming back like a moth to a flame. It stocks products from designers all over Europe, hence the name European Light + Design Centre, and upon viewing their website’s catalogue, a few become favourites with first sight.

The first designer to capture my attention was German-born Ingo Maurer. This typographer-cum-graphic-designer incorporates everything – wooden hangers, butterfly ornaments (that sit perched on and flock to floating lightbulbs), pictures and postcards – but the one that really caught my eye was a piece titled ‘Comic book Explosion.’ Featuring cut-outs from comic book pages (speech bubbles, characters, action sound effect typography – BAOOOM) all explode from the centre where the actual lightbulb sits. Visitors to his section of the website will, hopefully, be just as mesmerised as I was.

Viso is a clever design company that uses a single barrel name – an excellent tool in marketing. But what markets this company even better is its 60s and 70s-inspired lighting designs – an era that has been immortalised in almost every creative industry from film, to fashion, to music. Unlike Maurer, who’s been on the light design scene since the 60s, Viso is a newbie having only established itself in the industry in the late 90s. One design to look out for is the Caprice collection’s ‘Bender.’ Bender is one of 4 graphic options that can be set into a glass bead-like structure. It is a large tube with a illuminated lightbulb inside it and a 70s neon signs printed on it. This whole structure is suspended from the ceiling.

For more information on these unique and breathtaking lighting designs, go to www.eldc.co.za.