Dezeen promotion: lighting consultancy LightCollective has collaborated with electronics brand Philips to create a smartphone app enabling lighting designers to collect and share their inspirations, available to download and trial for free from today on Apple and Android (+ movie).

Martin Lupton and Sharon Stammers from Light Collective created the database for professionals in the lighting and design industries so that "a global online community would record, document and analyse the lit environment".

Features include the recognition of geo-tagged photographs so that users can view pictures taken around them or search by place through maps, and comment and favourite functions that track the popularity of your images.

The interface appears as a mood-board of uploaded images, which can be scrolled through for inspiration.

The app is compatible with both Apple and Android devices and can be downloaded from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

Here is some more information from Philips:

Philips and Light Collective offer a new crowd-sourced and image-based app for Lighting designers to share inspiration

The LightCollector app from Philips and Light Collective is based upon two lighting design fundamentals: the desire to be inspired and the need to store the things that inspire us so we can use them when required. LightCollector is an opportunity to create a crowd sourced global image collection for the professional lighting industry sharing to aid greater knowledge, ease of working and collective creativity.

As explained by Martin Lupton and Sharon Stammers from the lighting consultancy Light Collective “We know how often we trawl our image library to find the perfect image to illustrate our concept to our client. We know that somewhere, in the depths of our not-quite-adequately filed hard drive we have that photograph we once took, in that city we once visited, of daylight transmitted through a stained glass window and creating an explosion of colour on the floor. Finding the image allows us to explain what we are trying to achieve in our design. LightCollector is a resource for collecting these light based images.”

‘’We loved the idea of an inspirational light and lighting database as a way to spark and share creativity for each design challenge. We hope to support the design community in creating better and more ground-breaking solutions harnessing light that impact people lives through this shared inspiration.’’ Matthew Cobham, responsible for lighting application at Philips Lighting.

The result is an easy to use App, which will enable lighting and design professionals to speed up their image searching requirements and to feed their creative need for inspiration. As a mobile enabled tool, it allows use of the App while on the go on both Apple and Android platforms. The App is the key to initial involvement in LightCollector but the web interface is equally important.

Visit the LightCollector website for more information.

Download the App for Android in the Google-Play store here. The App for Apple phones is available from today.

www.light-collector.com