markbell's blog

For his amazing greeting skills, and customer attentiveness, Griffin Bell has been given a seat on the board of supervisors at Omega Too. Relentless is his pursuit of friendliness and putting customers at ease, Griffin has proven himself to be a valuable asset to the sales force at Omega Too. Congratulations on a job well done Griffin!

Before Mark Bell was an owner and custom light designer at Omega Too, he was an Art Director in the Advertising world. Creating ads for clients like Saturn cars, Sun Valley Mall, Dell Computers, The Rainforest Action Network, and Peet's coffee to name a few. Now he offers his design services to new business start-ups who are using Omega Too for their commercial lighting. It may sound like an odd combo, but visual branding takes on all forms; from the lights you hang on the ceiling, to the business cards you hand out, to the website you ask customers to visit.

So business has been slow lately. And Vanessa Bell, my wife and partner in Omega Too says to me " Funny, we don't seem to sell as much when we play classical music." -Which got me to thinking, how much does music play in to the purchasing of vintage lights in our store's showroom.
So I did a little test using Pandora. (which for anyone who doesn't know is an amazing, free Apple application of streaming music you can plug in to your stereo via your iphone.) For three weeks, I picked three days. Each day got one of three types of music. Alternating each type of music to day of each week.

In an effort to stay up with the times, we started twittering.
At first glance, a hot mess. People trying to get you to click off on to "Promotional" links like teeth whitening ads or car insurance. So that most of the folks that follow you, have little or no interest in what you do, or who you are. they just want the clicks.
But in between all the phonies and hustlers, we found some really nice people. Actually interested in Vintage lighting, and old home restoration. Even folks with a taste for the new 'steampunk" lights, like myself.

So, not too bad, I guess.

Here is one of the lights Vanessa designed for the Fayman house. And an example of the tissue session sketch we go through before a build. Both Vanessa's consultations and the pre-build drawings can be very helpful in making sure you get just the room you dreamed of.

Lighting, like lingerie, is intended to set the mood, and highlight your best architectural features.
In other words, it sets the atmosphere of the room, creates a feeling, and provides accent to style points of the room. (Lighting, luckily, also can disguise a room’s shortcomings.)

There are 3 main types of lighting, general, task, and accent:

1. General Lighting ( some folks call it "ambient")

Is the foundation of any room’s lighting scheme. It's what provides the overall
illumination of a room, enabling the occupants to be able to walk around

Aren't these adjustable lights cool?
My wife designed them, my son and I worked on the parts, and my daughter and my son put them together using only the best UL listed parts & high temp. wire. There is now a row of them hanging in our kitchen.
Call it proud-parent-itis, but I think they can take over the family business any day now ( so what if they are only 7 and 9.) so my wife and I can retire to travel the world in search of old slip shade lights and ancient iron chandeliers.