If you’re from the Midwest, it’s not hard to figure out that the automotive giants in Detroit and their subsidiaries have met with economic hard times. In the land of buyouts, downsizing and exodus, Tom Bagnasco has been a fixture with the world’s largest auto manufacturer, General Motors, for more than 18 years—a feat for any designer. As an adept small business owner, he has learned plenty along the way and diversified his customer base. In our PLSN Interview, Bagnasco discusses lighting in the D.
How did you get started in the industry?
We started out like a lot of guys in the business, with local bands, probably around 1975. LDS (Lighting Design Services) is a Serviced Disabled Veteran owned business. I was in Vietnam from 1969 through ’71—honorable discharged in ’72—with the Marine Corps, and it’s kind of ironic because when I was in the bush, I was listening to Grand Funk Railroad and Wolfman Jack on Armed Forces Radio. I ultimately ended up touring with Grand Funk for a number of years, starting in 1979, which is when I started touring with national acts. The next big guys out of Detroit were the Romantics, and I did their breakout album tour in 1981, as their lighting designer/director. Then did the John Cougar Mellencamp tour for the American Fool album in 1982.
That was pretty big at the time.
I hit a lot of these guys on their premiere albums and it was a lot of fun. There were a number of other ones, but those are the guys I was with most of the years I was touring with rock ‘n’ roll.
Then you moved into corporate work, right?
We moved into General Motors work about 18 years ago—we’ve actually been a supplier to them for 18 years now.
What does Lighting Design Services, do?
We provide design, consultation, specify equipment and provide bid packages for all of our clients, as well as implementation.
Did that happen as a result of being affiliated with GM?
I saw a niche there. It was hard for them to decipher lighting quotes and they needed a local designer to help them, and I was available at the time. Like I said, it’s been a long term relationship now.
Working for anybody for 18 years is quite a while. What is your role with them now?
My primary role is to design, consult and implement auto show exhibits. We’ve been doing that since 1989 through 2006. From the year 2000 through 2006, I’ve been the lead designer on the GM Experience. We do a lot of other special events for General Motors, such as the upcoming SEMA Show 2006 in November, in Vegas.
Just how busy does GM keep you?
GM is about 40% of our overall business. The rest of it is architectural lighting in churches, museums and specialty projects. As a disabled veteran-owned business we have access to government contracts, and we’re working on some stuff for Homeland Security and the Department of Natural Resources.
GM and the U.S. auto industry are hurting. How do you see that affecting businesses that are built on that economy?
From what I can tell right now, even though everyone is in dire straits, the way they sell product, even in hard times, is to market product, and their biggest envelope is the auto show. Like I said, they’re about 40% of our business, and obviously a very good client, but not our only client. This time of year, we are quite busy with museum projects.
What’s that like?
We design, engineer and specify museum lighting, and we’ve done about five museums, now. The first one was the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY. We did the GM World Museum in Detroit, MI. We did the GM Heritage Museum in Sterling Heights, MI. We finished a project last year with the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History, where we did a walk-through exhibit. And, we’ve just finished two museum exhibit projects at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI.
They all sound like interesting projects. What can you tell us about the Henry Ford?
It’s called the “With Liberty and Justice for All” exhibit. It’s a permanent exhibit within the confines of the building and we’re basically lighting exhibits, graphics and, most importantly, we’re lighting historical artifacts throughout the exhibit space, such as remnants of Washington’s Camp, a letter from Patrick Henry and the Rosa Park’s bus. In effect, we’re lighting things that have shaped American History.
That carries a lot of responsibility.
We use very, very low footcandle readings on anything of consequence—three to four footcandles on any given artifact or historic piece is what we end up looking for—so it’s quite tricky to get that to work in that environment and have it lit properly. There’s a lot of contrast—it’s very museum style lighting.
You use the dark spaces and low illumination levels to light most things in order to control light damage?
It’s to control damage. Even though you use UV filters, it can still damage paper, in particular, and any cloth material, even leather. We have to be very careful. The pathway lighting may be 40 or 50 footcandles, but those artifacts are very precisely lit not to exceed four footcandles. It’s tricky and a lot of fun figuring all of that out.
We’ve got another exhibit that just opened this summer at the Henry Ford. It’s a historic building called the Soybean Lab and it’s more of an architectural project. We did period lighting for the building itself, because of its historic nature around the turn of the century, and I was able to conceal LED lighting to support that look and be able to light the artifacts from a concealed location. It looked as close to period as you could get, down to the lamps which were historic Thomas Edison 1890 filament lamps. We snuck in some LEDs, hidden behind the timber of the building, and we were able to get a 20-footcandle reading out in front with it recessed behind columns and structures.
It would seem that LED fixtures make a lot of sense. They may not offer the efficacy of conventional light sources, but they have no UV, right?
You can get the footcandle reading you’re looking for and feel confident you’re not going to damage precious American artifacts in the process.
We’ll wrap this up with one of the traditional closing questions: Do you miss being on the road, touring?
[Laughs]. I do. That’s where I learned my trade.
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