Silkina MArhI (State University), Moscow E-mail: smakmv@mail.ru ABSTRACT The article considers problems of spatial orientation by means of light navigating visual and communicative systems as well as by structuring light information, utilitarian, architectural and landscape illumination. <...> It also discusses the infl uence of visual communications is an important composition facility of comprehensive design of all illumination types on forming light-and-colour medium of a night city. <...> Keywords: city medium, light-and-colour medium, visual communications, light-and-information illumination, light advertising, orientation, navigation visual-and-communicative systems Artifi cial illumination reveals the structure of a city during the hours of darkness and helps to orientate oneself in space. <...> The informational value of the light medium has multiple layers: its basis is the light frame of a city formed by utilitarian illumination, which is supplemented with informational, architectural and landscape illumination. <...> Together, these illumination types form light-and-colour medium of a modern city, which responds to the functional and aesthetic requirements of the inhabitants. <...> It would seem that visual and communicative components only relate to light information, but this is not exactly so. <...> The informational value of a light medium, as well as of a spatial environment is provided by a number of interconnected components. <...> Visual communications include three main areas: commercial systems (shop windows, signboards, light advertisement installations of various types, media screens, etc.); navigation systems (address signs, systems of pointers, information installations: 29 maps, plans, public transport stops signs, underground entrances); social systems (information installations) [1]. <...> These systems infl uence the architectural medium signifi cantly in the daytime and form a light space in the night time. <...> The mutual infl uence of the main groups of city illumination (utilitarian, architectural, information) [2, p. 167], as well as of the landscape, forms the visual image of a night city, and located points in space. <...> Historically, the evening illumination of a city consisted of the interactions of the utilitarian (oil and gas lanterns) and the information illumination (house number lanterns appeared in Russia in the second half of the 19 th century). <...> Then, late in the 19th century, they were supplemented with commercial and advertising illumination. <...> It was <...>