Let There Be Neon

 

They create lighting fixtures, but it would be a mistake to call these objects lamps – they are more like "something that emits light, but can be an object, a sculpture."

 

The team behind NO/ON consists of Dimitar Vranchev and Yulian Mikov, who founded the studio in 2019. According to Yulian, it is hard to say where the work of one partner ends and the other’s signature style begins. "It's a collaborative game, and it's clear that we're going to change a lot along the way. Our philosophy is to play with the process, not so much to work with specific materials at all costs,” says Mikov.

Mikov was born in 1986 in Vidin, studied architecture in Bucharest before settling in Sofia and entering the field of interior design. As he points out, professional categories are rather unnecessary in the field of design and everyone goes through different periods and interests. He is currently part of the team working on the OKOL Lake Park complex near Samokov.

    

"Dimitar and I started going back in time, looking into how light bulbs used to be constructed, and at the end of this process we switched to working with neon. Nowadays neon is like an old appliance, mostly used in public advertisements in stores and rarely seen anywhere else. We wanted to give it a new life, and we wanted the light to not look aggressive, but rather create a softer ambient atmosphere," Yulian says.

Their name is a play on the word "neon" and on the action of switching on and off, presence and absence.

 

Earlier this winter, their work was introduced to the public for the first time, and currently some of it can be viewed at artnewscafe in Plovdiv. The two are yet to seek greater prominence for their work; for now, they are mostly oriented towards clients outside of Bulgaria.

"Mostly because this type of design is more popular in the West. I don't know if there is a certain philosophy of life that makes a society choose to live with fewer but more valuable objects. For example, in a place like Belgium, there is not a single house that is not well maintained," says Yulian, who often draws parallels to his architectural influences. According to him, there are more and more opportunities for reaching customers abroad and working on niche projects and ideas, and at the same time a certain exhaustion with the big names in the industry.

Most of the duo's objects are created in Plovdiv, where Dimitar lives. He is also a multidisciplinary designer with a portfolio of diverse projects over the years.

"We want to create quality rather than quantity, that is, limited editions that have a heart and a soul. We want to avoid the functionality of typical lighting fixtures, ours is a kind of collectible design. It's always nice to be part of the whole process, to know why a piece is in a particular place, why a piece of metal is cut the way it is.”

Their exhibition Tróchia Collection [τροχιά] is at artnewscafe until December 11th.
You can find out more about their work at instagram.com/no_onstudio и no-on.eu.