The captivating Ion Two—the newest addition to Telgen’s line—looks like a bubble that has trapped a spirit like a luminescent ghost or a glowing genie.

The Ion Two is built around a central glass cylinder, which serves as the base for additional glowing glass rings. Every part of the lamp is filled with inert neon gas and, through a special process, the neon is turned into plasma so that the light looks more gentle and delicate than what shines through a regular neon tube. Plus, the plasma reacts to the presence of body heat, making the light more intense in the exact point where someone touches the glass. Plasma can also be manipulated by magnetic fields, so the different ionic charges illuminate when they come in contact with each other or become closer together. As a result, the user can create different intensities of light by adding, subtracting or moving the rings around.

A New York based designer,Hlynur Atlason, has designed Yorky – a versatile light that inhabits a dimension between the familiar and the foreign.

While its sculptural and whimsical shape evokes memories of an animal-like creature, Yorky is a very versatile and practical light that can sit or lay on a table at different angles to illuminate varied surfaces or hang from its leash on a wall. Whether a reflector bulb, an energy saving fluorescent or a classic Edison bulb, Yorkie’s wide conical shape accommodates a variety of bulbs for different applications. “Yorky’s purpose is beholden to its’ owner: As a companion in everyday adventures, a fixture on a wall or sitting on a shelf with discipline and poise.” Made of silicone, Yorky is safe, flexible, and comes in three playful colors: white, yellow and pink.

The NanoLight, a new Kickstarter-funded 12-watt LED bulb, eschews the fancy-schmancy smart capabilities that are all the rage and instead focuses on groundbreaking energy savings.

The 100-watt replacement bulb is so efficient — it produces over 1600 lumens while consuming only 12 watts — that its creators are hailing it as the “the World’s Most Efficient Light Bulb.” And as for the price point? At $45, it isn’t all that shabby either.

The first thing you’ll notice about the NanoLight is its somewhat alien geometric form that’s decidedly “a bit funky” as SmartPlanet puts it. What you’re seeing is a printed circuit board (PCB) that’s been folded into a light bulb-ish shape and mounted with electrical components. It’s not the prettiest thing but that’s obviously besides the point.

The big deal here is that the NanoLight’s developers — a San Diego-based trio composed of Gimmy Chu, Christian Yan, and Tom Rodigner — have created a heat sink-free bulb (a rarity) that serves as a 100- or 75-watt replacement (again, a rarity in the world of LEDs) while offering the benefits of standard incandescent bulbs such as instant-on capabilities and omnidirectionality that aren’t normally found in LED or CFL bulbs. The lifespan of both the 10-watt NanoLight and the signature 12-watt model is between 25 and 30 years based on usage of 3 hours per day.

The Energy Seed LED halo shaped lamp uses the little remaining bits of juice left after the battery is otherwise unusable, and illuminates itself.

The design includes slots for the public to dispose of all shapes and sizes of commonly disposed batteries and scrounges just two volts to illuminate an LED. Most garbage batteries have just under this amount at their point of expiration, so two AAs combined for instance is usually enough to get the lamp lit.

Created by Sungwoo Park and Sunhee Kim the use of the Energy Seed means“Trashed batteries can be born again as a seed to blossom light.”

At the end of the day the batteries will lose all useful charge, they will again be waste, and need to be recycled properly. The Energy Tree does squeeze some useful life out of their toxic little bodies before the bitter end however!

In developing nations, power outages or no access to an electrical grid means hospitals are left without lighting. Medical procedures are performed by kerosene lantern, flashlight, and in woefully underlit conditions. Michael O’Brien, from Sydney’s University of Technology, created an easy-to-ship and -assemble, hand-folded sheet metal and LED surgery lighting solution for developing countries. Michael experimented extensively with sheet metal patterns to arrive at a very simple  solution that required no special tools to assemble, adjust or maintain the light.

The frame is made of a single sheet of metal. One material means one industrial process, which means that it’s ultra-cheap to produce at scale. Along with the LED components, it can be shipped in an envelope, making it easy to get to its destination. The frame is perforated to allow it to be folded into shape by hand, making it easy to install. O’Brien notes that this allows an opportunity for small businesses to grow around assembling the lights for use.

What’s interesting about this design is that as much attention was paid to the logistics chain as to the final product. After all, lighting in a hospital situation is already a solved problem. The real problem is getting lights to all the hospitals.

This Light is part of the series: Smart Designs for Social Good.

RIMA is a superb desk lamp by German luminary design studio Dreipuls. With its slim design, this light bar has no traditional switch but rather four rings which can easily be shifted manually like a curtain to turn on/off and adjust light. Price tag: 1840€ ($2360). See it in action in the video below. Enjoy!

Companies from Google to Comcast to Electric Imp are trying to connect home devices and appliances to the web, but the internet of things remains more of a complicated, distant dream than a reality. Spark Devices wants to start off simple, with one of the most used items in your house — the light bulb.

Spark Devices launched on Kickstarter with a working prototype of what it calls the Spark Socket. All a user needs to do to get their lights on the web is screw a regular light bulb into the Spark Socket and screw that into a regular light fixture. They can then control their lighting — on, off, and dimming — through an iOS or Android app, which opens up entirely new avenues for home lighting. Users can schedule their lights when they’re away, set them to slowly turn on in the morning, and even set them to flash when someone calls their phone.

“[The Spark Socket] was inspired by my dad, who’s deaf and uses lights for notification,” Founder Zach Supalla told Wired. “At first I wanted to solve a specific problem he has. Now that he uses a cellphone for text messaging, he’s very difficult to get a hold of when he’s at home and takes his phone out of his pocket. However, once I started working on it I realized that there was a lot of potential for broader uses by providing an open API.”

Backers can pre-order Spark Sockets for $60 apiece, and the company is trying to reach $250,000 on Kickstarter.

The Solar Loop is a lamp that harnesses solar energy to work. The solar cells are integrated in a very fashionable way, giving the lamp a very kitsch feel. I love the way you can casually hang multiple Loops on a tree, giving them a very ethereal vibe. I reckon a better option than LEDs, especially they will work even through power failures.

This Light is part of the series: Smart Designs for Social Good.