>> Andy Lang: I own Lang Lighting Design.
It's in Dallas, Texas.
And I've owned that company since 1994.
What a lighting designer does is same thing as an architect does
but we just do one segment of a building.
So we do interior lighting, exterior lighting, landscape lighting,
building lighting and all that kind of stuff.
So we -- we're a part of that design team.
We just do that segment of the building.
We have a -- my office is here in Dallas and we have a company of 6 people.
So we -- everybody in that company is part of the design staff.
So we do a lot of very high end international resort work
and a lot of high end residential work.
So you know the daily you know day which is probably more than 8 hours typically you know --
and they make you know that in design school too because design school is --
you know they make it very difficult so they want to know who's really going
to be prepared to work in this field.
But normal day is just assigning what work is happening that week because what's different
about what we do versus being in a standard architectural office is that --
when I first came to Dallas, I worked at an architectural office.
I wasn't in lighting so I went straight in the architecture, got my license and probably worked
on one large job for about a 12 to 24 month period.
I worked on one project.
Now we work on probably 6 or 8 or more projects a week.
So depending on what's going on with a job, we could be doing something on a project that's
under construction, we could be going to meetings that a project just starts
or we could be doing design work at our office.
One thing, when I was at Kansas State University in the Architecture Department,
I didn't know you could do lighting for a living.
Matter of fact, what -- you weren't really exposed to that at least in the young 80s.
But we've got a good relationship with the Interior Design Department at Kansas State
so every year when they come to Dallas, they visit some different firms.
We're always one of them.
So they want to show the students there that just because you go into a traditional program
at Kansas State whether it's architecture or interior design, there's spin offs to that.
So I happen to be in one of the spin offs.
And I do know that the Interior Design Department
at Kansas State has some minor emphasis on lighting now and I'm trying to cultivate that.
So to expose the students to that aspect of the career possibility instead of thinking,
"I'm interior design" or "I'm in architecture," I'm going right to that as far as my career goes
because there's really a lot more out there
than just straight you know architecture and interior design.
So... The biggest impact to me at Kansas State was well one going there
but I didn't grow up in the area.
I grew up in Pennsylvania.
I went to Kansas State.
I was like shell shocked you know about just being in a different place.
But you know it really you know changed my life and I know they still do this
in the Design Department is that I was able to leave school my first senior year
in the architecture program and I went -- I came to Dallas and I interned.
And again, that was another life changing thing for me because having that experience
in a real live office space and seeing what goes
on there is really totally different than what happens in a school.
And it really gives you an idea of what's really going to happen when you graduate
and get that degree is what your life is probably going to be.
So that had a major impact to me and I would recommend that for everybody.
You know, be passionate about what you do.
And if you're not going into architecture or you decide to come into lighting design,
make sure you come in and you have an interest in what we do.
You've looked at our company.
You have an interest in lighting and try to show what you've done with lighting before you walked
in the door because somebody's going to walk in the door and is going to do that
and they're probably going to be the one that's hired.