What’s in a Name?
Oftentimes clients ask us about the meaning of our name, Lux Virtual, so I want to share a little bit of our thinking behind it.
“Lux” is the Latin word for “light.” My wife went to school at Yale, who’s school motto “Lux et Veritas” (“Light and Truth”) was emblazoned on T-shirts and coffee mugs around campus. I always loved that phrase, Light and Truth. When Rob and I first started the company, the core of what we wanted to be doing is bringing light, or understanding, to complex ideas.
So we started with the word “Lux.” From there we had the idea for the shield in our logo. Having a Latin word in our name inspired thoughts of heraldry and medieval symbolism. I like the shield because it implies that we truly stand for something. Our goal is not to “market” our client’s products or ideas; our goal is always to tell a story that illuminates those ideas with honesty and clarity. We have the good fortune of working with clients whose products are truly brilliant. We view our job as simply communicating their vision to a wider audience.
No heraldic shield would be complete without a postpositive adjective somewhere in the mix (nerd alert). We chose “Virtual” for a couple reasons. First, when we render our 3D animations, our computers are using “virtual” rays of light to illuminate the objects in the scene. So “virtual light” is central to our business in a very literal sense.
But secondly, we see the dawn of virtual reality as an incredible opportunity for technical communication and education. We are committed to using the best tools available to tell our clients’ stories, and we believe that virtual reality is an incredibly powerful medium for visually explaining complex ideas.
So that’s our name. Lux Virtual. A little bit nerdy (ok, maybe a lot), but that’s how we roll.