A permanent magnet is a magnetic dipole. It doesn't create "excitations," a magnetic field forms surrounding the two poles, pointing out of the north end and into the south end.

Moving a magnet doesn't typically create light because the motion doesn't typically produce a sufficient amount of energy to excite electrons and cause the excitation-decay process that occurs in, say, LEDs. Said another way, the material physics for free electrons recombining with "holes" simply doesn't exist here. Theoretically it should be possible to move a magnet with the right frequency and in the correct plane near an LED to produce a bit of light, but this would be rather difficult because the direct interaction between this magnet and the electrons in the semiconductor material would be rather weak. Obviously we can use motors to rotate magnets in an electric generator to produce electricity in cables and wires and then create useful circuits that way, but the physics of photon production a bit more complex than just moving a magnet around.

Moving a magnet can induce an electrical current in a conductive material, i.e. a copper wire. This is because the magnet interacts strongly with the free electrons in the conductive material, and the electrons move to produce a current. Photons are released most commonly when an electron "decays" energy states (it loses energy) and changes from a high energy state to a lower energy state. The frequency of light emitted depends on the energy difference between these states, known as the "band gap." Semiconductors have many different medium sized band gaps. Conductors have band gaps with actually "overlap" and cross each other, indicating little to no energy change is necessary for the electrons to change states. This is why they can move so freely in the conducting band to create current. Insulators, meanwhile, have very large band gaps and the amount of energy required for an electron to change states in an insulator often while break down the material, i.e. burn it.

When you move a magent around, you simply cause that magnetic dipole to "wiggle," but this is not a photon. A photon is a continuously oscillating electrical and magnetic field moving through spacetime, with those fields oriented perpindicular to each other. Only if you understand higher-order quantum field theory should you try to make sense of the description of a photon being an "excitation of the electromagnetic field." I don't like that description. It is not good for lay people, and I don't even know if it is agreed upon in the physics community. It is its own electromagnetic fields, and they are oscillating constantly. It's not a ripple of water propagating outwards from some disturbance losing energy as it travels, like you threw a pebble into a pool. It is a much more complicated particle and wave than that.

Edit: I want to add something else here. Some people have stated that moving around a magnet does produce light waves, but that is not necessarily true. A changing magnetic field can induce a current, but only where free electrons are present, and a current does not necessarily produce light, or at least any useful light beyond the imperceptible statistical stray photon. A photon is a "packet" of energy which exhibits the characteristics of both a particle and a wave. It is a fundamental piece or building block of energy in the universe. Moving a magnet around does not inherently induce some quantized amount of energy to be flung about the universe in the form of a photon. A moving magnetic field, in a vacuum, is not itself any form of energy, even though the movement of this magnetic field superficially is similar to the changing magnetic field of a photon. A changing magnetic field can induce a force - the electromagnetic force - on free charges, but no energy exchange takes place until electrons begin moving.

Whether the magnetic field itself uses photons - being the fundamental carrier particle for the EM force - to "communicate" with or "touch without touching" the electrons is something of a much higher level debate, to the best of my knowledge.