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“To Educate and To Separate.” This is a simple statement, but it reflects the purpose of what ELLI wishes to accomplish. The focus of ELLI is to teach new concepts that will greatly advance the discipline of Landscape Lighting Design.
ELLI was established in January of 2019 as an Educational Resource for the practice of Landscape Lighting Design. It was developed and operated by Mark Carlson. However, this morphed into a multi-educator platform after 2020, where Mark selected other leading landscape lighting professionals to aid in this offering.
In January of 2024, ELLI launched a membership program that was to serve as a financial stream to aid in its expansion. The goal was to acquire a team of highly experienced professionals that ELLI could pay to serve this profession. However, the lack of membership made its offerings unsustainable.
As of 2025, Mark became ELLI’s only educator to allow the training program to continue to move forward. This move became a benefit for ELLI because it allowed Mark the time to focus on the mission of educating by separating with the preparations to building the ‘Affective Lighting Design’ program.
Currently, ELLI has ended its membership program and is re-establishing its offering as a “Pay-to-Play” offering. It’s unfortunate that the Landscape Lighting profession does not have the support it needs to provide for the whole. Instead, ELLI will effectively monetize itself to ensure that its contributors are properly rewarded for their huge time investments.
Note: ELLI was created through passion, there have been ‘real-world’ costs that someone paid for. In this case, it was Mark Carlson who took on this debt for the betterment of the whole.
The future success of ELLI will be in its education and training programs. It will offer its classes in two (2) manners: 1) Certification, and 2) Non-Certification. The certified approach will consist of scheduled mentoring and testing, whereas the non-certified will be a casual, at-will approach. Pre-recorded, Online training classes will be categorized by groupings called Series.
In addition to certification, ELLI will provide two (2) Levels of education: 1) Foundational Level, and 2) Advanced Level. Please see Online Training and Live Training pages.
The Advanced Level training program will be provided as our new development--‘Affective Lighting Design.’ This program is completely new to the profession and industry, as it was developed by Mark Carlson. It will allow current landscape lighting designers the opportunity to advance beyond anything currently offered in Landscape Lighting Design. Please see Emotion & Light page.
