Harman's Martin Professional Announces Winner of Annual Young Lighting Designer Contest

Harman's Martin Professional announces Garou Blancan as the winner of its 2014 Professional Young Lighting Designer contest. Throughout the month of February, young amateur lighting designers from around the world competed for a chance to win by programming their ultimate show to a music track of their choice and submitting it the Martin Facebook page. Blancan was presented as the winner during the 2014 Martin Professional Prolight + Sound press conference during last week's show.

As the first place winner, Blancan, a 25 year old Belize-born Canadian, has been awarded an all expenses paid trip to the 2014 Prolight + Sound Expo in Frankfurt Germany as well as with a Martin MG20 lighting controller. The MG20 is a powerful yet compact controller that is easy-to-use and offers 10 fader playbacks, an external video screen, an effects generator, as well as a host of other features.

"The decision to choose Garou as the winner was unanimous," commented Paul Pelletier, product manager for controllers, Harman Martin Professional. "His design contained every element of a great show, including creative positions, movements, color mixing, variation, and blackout. Now armed with an MG20 controller to further his already fantastic creative abilities, we are very excited to see Garou put together many great shows in the future."

A winner was chosen through a simple process: Facebook users voted for their favorite shows and the three shows with the most votes were then judged by a three-person panel consisting of last year's winner, Brad Helzer, Martin Professional's global product and application specialist, Theis Wermuth, and Pelletier.

The contest also awarded prizes for the second and third place winners. As the second place winner, Ricardo Dias of Portugal was awarded Martin's M2PC control surface that delivers a professional suite of features directly from any PC. The third place winner, Mihail Kisiov of Bulgaria, won a Martin USB Duo DMX Interface that offers XLR 5P female connectors and provides two DMX 512 universes from any USB enabled Windows-based PC.

"Congratulations to Garuou, Ricardo, and Mihail on their achievement as the world's most remarkable young lighting designers," commented Pelletier. "We are proud to support aspiring lighting design professionals and extend thanks to all the participants and those who took the time to vote to make this contest the best yet. We look forward to putting a new generation of lighting designers to the test next year."

To view the winning shows, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/MartinProfessional/app_486254294756872